


Tim Drake and The Mystery of Superboy

by barfboy



Category: Batman - All Media Types, Superboy (Comics), Teen Titans - All Media Types, Young Justice (Comics)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Non-Graphic Rape/Non-Con, Pre-New 52, Recovery, This fic is mostly about Tim being an idiot
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-05-28
Updated: 2016-06-25
Packaged: 2018-07-10 16:06:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 5
Words: 39,068
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6993283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/barfboy/pseuds/barfboy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Something is seriously wrong with Kon and Tim is determined to find out what it is no matter how many agonizing social boundaries he has to navigate to do it.  Also Metallo steals Cyborg’s head and tries to level the city of San Francisco with it.  Things are pretty normal.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. August

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even know how to preface this fic. I've been working on it for a literal year (and I took maybe a 6 month break at some point), but now I'm 2 chapters away from finishing so I've finally decided to start going back and revising and posting it.
> 
> Basically I started writing this on a whim after picking up some issues of Superboy at my local comic shop only to find that some literally insanely fucked up shit happens to Kon during the length of that run. Suffice it to say, things got out of control. 
> 
> This fic deals predominantly with one specific incident, but virtually any issues featuring Knockout are good to read if you want extra background information. It's not necessary to understand what's going on though.
> 
> As for the rape/non-con warning, this fic deals with trauma/recovery to an extent but its extremely mild and there are no actual scenes containing rape or non-con in this fic, in case that's something you're sensitive to.
> 
> Also, since this fic has the added benefit of basically being already finished, I'm going to aim for updates once a week, probably on Saturdays, but possibly Sundays depending on my work schedule.
> 
> Besides that I've got nothing left to add! Please enjoy Tim drake making a fool of himself in every imaginable way for the next forty-thousand words.

 

Tim isn’t really looking at his monitors when he catches it out of the corner of his eye.  He’s trying to finish scripting the program he’s been working on for the last 3 weeks to update the batcomputer’s defenses because ever since Bruce left for his so-far indefinite batman inc. world tour, Dick has been letting it slide, and while Tim is absolutely positive that Damian is more than capable of updating the batcomputer’s defenses in Bruce’s stead, Tim also does not trust that Damian wouldn’t do it without also setting up innumerous hidden data caches reserved exclusively for whatever diabolical doing tickles his fancy on a particular day.  So Tim is doing it himself.  Again.  And this time, he’ll make sure the brat can’t hack his way into it.

So Tim isn’t looking at his monitors.  He is in fact, incredibly pre-occupied when he notices that Clark is in Kon’s bedroom at the farm, right between Steph’s living room where she has been playing solitaire alone for the past three hours at her coffee table, and the penthouse kitchen where Alfred is cooking dinner for one especially undeserving ten-year old ex-assassin.

Tim only looks up fully because Clark’s visits to the farm are rarely for pleasure these days, and because, historically, Tim knows he and Kon have not always seen eye to eye, but Tim doesn’t fully turn to face the screen until he notices Kon hunched over with his head in his hands, sitting on the side of his bed.  Clark’s hand resting comfortingly on his back.  Their faces are bowed, not angled towards the camera so Tim can’t read Clark’s lips, but he knows he’s talking, and Tim has never regretted not putting that mic in Kon’s bedside table lamp more than he does at this very moment, despite the violation of privacy Tim knows it would be.

It’s never been clear to Tim whether or not Kon knows about the cameras.  Stephanie definitely knows because sometimes she’ll do a little stupid dance right in front of the one in her living room, or she’ll pull a dining room chair into the room and stand up on it to show Tim some rude comic she’s drawn, usually either about himself or Damian.  One time she put on a puppet show from behind the couch for nearly a whole hour.  But Kon had never shown such obvious awareness, and so Tim was never sure, despite the fact that he did seem to sometimes make faces directly into Tim’s cameras, and once when Cassie had been over Tim swore Kon had winked at the camera behind Cassie’s back while they were making out; an act which Tim deliberately ignored and paid no attention to what-so-ever.  

To be honest, Tim is surprised he hasn’t caught Kon and Cassie in the actual act yet, considering how promiscuous Kon is.  The thought gives Tim pause and he takes a moment to think maybe Kon does know about the camera and that’s exactly why Tim has never caught him and Cassie really going at it, but it’s out of his head as soon as he looks back up at the monitor where Kon is now enveloped in Clark’s arms, shaking.  Tim can see where Kon’s hand is clutched in Clark’s flannel shirt and Tim’s first instinct is to check on Martha, which he does.  He finds her standing in front of the kitchen sink, peeling potatoes.  She glances at the stairs once and then back to her work.  His second instinct tells him to check on Cassie.  Steph seems to be doing just fine in her solitaire game, so he switches her off the screen and brings up Cassie’s kitchen.  It’s empty, but the lights are on, so he switches to her room where he finds her laying on her bed reading a comic book.

A huff escapes Tim, unbidden, and he brings Stephanie back up on the monitor.  It’s still early, Dick and Damian probably haven’t even left for patrol yet, so Tim feels relatively justified in using his comm. to call Steph.  He watches her blindly reaching for her phone somewhere behind her on the couch before bringing it to her ear.

“How’s the game going?” Tim asks before she can speak.

Stephanie groans and Tim watches her turn her head and glare at the camera.  Then she says, “Is it cheating to shuffle the deck when you can’t make any more moves?”

“Yeah,” Tim says.  “Pretty sure it is, Steph.”

“Hmm.”  She pins her phone to her ear with her shoulder and Tim watches her shuffle the deck.  “Oh well.”

“Have you seen or talked to Kara lately?” Tim asks.

Stephanie takes a moment before responding, adding a new card to one of her piles.  “Yeah, couple days ago, actually.  Over the weekend, she came into town to help with Mxyzptlk.  You were with the titans, I think.”

“Did she say anything to you?” Tim asked.

“She said many things to me, Tim.”

Tim groaned.  “Anything important?”

Stephanie also groaned, and Tim felt that it was distinctly mocking.  “I don’t know, what fits your particular definition of important today, Timothy?”

“Anything regarding current events in the Kent family?”

“Clark’s birthday is coming up,” Stephanie says.

“No.”

Stephanie turns to look at the camera again and flings her arm out.  “Yeah, it is Tim.  You can’t just decide Superman’s birthday isn’t happening.  It is.  Have you even gotten him anything yet?”

“That’s not what I meant, Stephanie.  What else did Kara say?”

A loud, static sigh bursts through Tim’s ear piece and Stephanie turns fully on the couch to face his camera.  “I don’t know, Tim.  Maybe it would be a little bit easier for me to help you out if you told me what kind of information you’re actually looking for.”

“Something’s up with Kon.  I don’t know what’s going on, I’m just trying to make sure it’s nothing serious.”

“Aww, that’s so-,”

“Stop.  Stephanie, just.  What did Kara say?”

“Okay, okay, hold on, let me think for a second.”  Stephanie turns back around and crosses her legs, elbows on her knees.  She doesn’t move for a minute, then says, “She did… mention something about one of the furies showing up again?  I guess Kara said they thought she’d been killed, but she seemed pretty out of it when they found her and she’s already in lockup again, so.  I don’t know, that’s probably not it…”

“No, you might be onto something.  Did Kara say which fury it was?”  Tim asks.

“Um… Blackout, or Rockout or something?”

Tim takes a moment to put his head in his hands and says in a monotone, “Knockout, Stephanie?”

Stephanie laughs loudly and says, “Got it one, boy wonder!”

“She… could have something to do with this…”

“Yeah?” Stephanie has gone back to her game.  “They have dealings or something?”

“Well, she sort of mentored him early on, I think, but he put her away after she killed a cop.  He mentioned her once or twice back when we were in Young Justice, but if her revival is what this is about, his reaction seems… disproportionate.” Tim says, and looks back to Kon’s screen where he is slouched in on himself, no longer being hugged, but nodding slowly to something Clark is saying.

“Maybe it’s something else then,” Stephanie says and stands up.  She leaves the room.

“Like what?”

“I don’t know, ask him.”

“I don’t think this is that kind of a situation, Steph.” Tim says, watching Clark rise to his feet with a hand on Kon’s shoulder.  When he finally leaves Kon’s room, Kon seems to cave in on himself and Tim feels something in his chest twinge a little bit.  He ignores it and looks back to Stephanie’s monitor in which she has just reappeared holding a bag of chicken whizzies.  “I need more information.”

“No, Timmy,” She says, “Little Timmy Tim Tim,” she looks at the camera.  “Literally every situation is that kind of a situation when it involves your friends.  If he doesn’t want to tell you what’s going on, then he won’t, and you’ll leave him alone because it’s none of your business.  Okay?”

For a moment Tim stays silent, until Stephanie says, “Okay?” and Tim feels the corner of his mouth quirk.

“Yeah… Okay.”

“Good,” Stephanie plops down on the couch and crams a hand full of whizzies into her mouth.

“But, Steph.  If you call me Little Timmy Tim Tim one more time, I’ll never speak to you again.”

“Whatever you say, Little Timmy Tim Tim.”

Tim disconnects his comm. to the sound of Stephanie’s boisterous cackling and tries to re-focus himself on the task at hand and not Kon’s monitor where he is laying on his bed with his back to the camera.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Two weeks later, after he’s finally finished writing and uploading his scripts onto the batcomputer’s mainframe Tim decides maybe, just maybe, he could casually head over to Titans Tower and offer to do the same for them.

Tim figures it must be a quiet weekend at the tower when he walks in on Bart and Gar going at it on the big screen in Mario Kart.  Gar greets him without looking away from their game but Bart abandons it entirely, speeding over to grab Tim’s shoulders with little to no warning. “Tim,CassieandKonarefighting!”

“Um,” Tim says.

“They can’t fight, Tim!” Bart says, this time slow enough that Tim can actually understand him without straining himself.  “I need them to be together, I live vicariously through their stable relationship!”

“Bart,” Tim says.

“You live vicariously through Superboy and Wonder Girl’s stable relationship?” Gar asks, having just won their half abandoned round of Mario Kart.  Tim silently congratulates him for asking the important questions.

“First of all, you should stop doing that,” Tim says to Bart.

“Why?” Bart asks.

“Because it’s not healthy.” Tim gets an incredulous look from Bart and, yeah, okay, Tim can take a hint, but he adds, “And it’s not really our business anyway,” just for good measure.  “Maybe they just need space.”

After a moment, Bart’s hands leave Tim’s shoulders and he says, “They’ve been in Cassie’s room for hours, Tim.  Like, actual hours.”

“Come on, Dude,” Gar says and pats the couch cushion next to him.  “Sit back down, play another round of Mario Kart with me.  I’ll even let you be Birdo this time.”  Then he looks back at Tim and says, “You want in on this?”

Tim shakes his head at the same time Bart zips over the back of the couch.  “I’m just here to update theTitan’s mainframe and security systems.”

“Ahuh,” Bart says.  “God forbid you stop by just to visit.”

Tim glares halfheartedly at the back of Bart’s head as he walks past the couch.  “I’ll be around for a while.  I can do both.”

“Dinner’s at seven!” Gar calls after him, Tim’s already rounded the corner of the hallway leading to their private rooms, but he makes a mental note.

If asked, even under duress, Tim swears he is on his way to his own room when he hears Cassie’s voice through the door to her bedroom.  He also swears that training and instinct is the only reason he stops walking when Kon says, “It’s not like that Cassie,” and Cassie replies with vitriol, “Oh, okay.  Tell me what it’s like, then, Kon.”

 

The silence goes on just long enough for Tim to question what he’s doing before Kon speaks again and Tim gets sucked back in, “It’s… look, Cassie you know I love you I just… I don’t think I’m in love with you… anymore.  I can’t really be sure about anything I’m feeling right now, to be honest.  So this is just… it’s for the best. Probably.”

“Probably,” Cassie says.

“Yeah.”

“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard you say.  And I’ve heard you say a lot of stupid stuff over the years, Kon.”

There’s a short pause and then Kon says, “That’s just how it is.  You’ve gotta believe me.  It’s not y-,”

“I swear to the Gods, Conner Kent, If you say ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ I will punch you through this wall.”

“Well,” Kon says after a moment of silence.  “That’s fair.”

“You can say you’re not in love with me anymore all you want, and maybe… I don’t know, maybe it’s even true and I just don’t want to believe it.  But you’re kidding yourself if you expect me to believe that’s all this is about.”

“You’re… not wrong.” Kon says.

“So?” Cassie’s voice has softened immensely. “What is this about, then?  This whole – all of this, it’s not like you.”

“I just can’t do this – relationships, right now.  With anyone.  I need to figure some stuff out first, I guess.” Kon says.

“So… this is just temporary?  We’re not actually breaking up.”

“No,” Kon says almost immediately.  And then, “Maybe.  I don’t know.  I can’t make you any promises right now.”

There is another long pause and Tim can almost hear Cassie taking a breath.  Maybe he just imagines it.  “I’m incredibly angry with you, right now.” She says. “But okay.”  And then with slightly more venom, “Fine.”

“Cassie, come on,” Kon says.  “Please don’t be like this.  I’m sorry.”

“Yeah, Same.” Cassie says, and Tim barely has time to arrange himself into a non-conspicuous position before she storms out of the room. If she sees him she gives no indication.

Kon follows shortly after, floating sadly and starting when he sees Tim.  “Whoa,” he says.  “Where did you even come from?”

Tim points his thumb in the direction of the rec room and says, “I’m just here to update the security systems.”

Kon squints.  “Didn’t Vic just…” he ducks his head and holds up a hand.  “You know what… Nope.  Never mind.”

“Are you okay?” Tim asks and knows it was the wrong thing to say as soon as he sees the way Kon is looking at him.

“I don’t know.” Kon says, and Tim can practically feel Kon’s anger in the air around him, squeezing his chest.   “You’re the boy genius, you tell me, Rob.”  Actually, Tim thinks maybe he can literally feel it.  “World’s greatest detective teach you how to read facial expressions yet?”  Yeah, Tim is definitely having trouble breathing, just barely, but it’s noticeable.

“Kon,” he says, and Tim’s slightly breathless tone seems to wake Kon up.  The feeling of his TTK compressing Tim’s chest disappears, and so does Kon.  Tim watches him glide down the hallway and around the corner to his own bedroom.  Admirably, Tim doesn’t jump when he notices Victor’s immense shadow looming over him.

“Updating the security systems, huh?” Vic says.

Tim turns to face him and says, “You can never be too careful.”

“Next time you want to visit, just visit, okay?”

“Sure,” Tim says and Vic sighs.

“We’ve got trouble.” He says.  When Tim looks back towards the hallway where Kon disappeared, he adds, “I think we should leave those two out of this one.  It’s nothing we can’t handle, just Dr. Light terrorizing civilians again.”

“Right,” Tim says and follows Vic back to the rec room where they find Bart face down on the couch literally vibrating with laughter, and Gar waddling in a circle around the coffee table after apparently having managed to shapeshift himself into a green version of Birdo.  “Jesus,” Tim says and doesn’t know what he’s more disturbed by: the fact that Bart is potentially literally dying of laughter, or the fact that Birdo counts as an animal in Gar’s quite frankly inconsistent archive of fauna.

“Don’t lie to me,” Vic looks down at him with his one human eyebrow raised.  “You miss this.”

“Maybe,” Tim says and smiles.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

After a thoroughly boring confrontation with Dr. Light, Tim decides that maybe he should make good on his excuse for coming to the tower, so while Bart opens the fridge to begin his customary post-battle one man eating contest and Vic goes to his room to perform routine maintenance, Tim heads down to the computer room.

Most of the scripts he’s written already for the batcomputer can be adapted for Titans Tower, but he’ll have to run a few diagnostics to make sure none of his code contradicts whatever security measures Vic already has running throughout the tower.  The process will take some time, but Tim’s involvement will be minimal, so he sits back in the chair and decides to call Stephanie on his comm. to let her know her plan was crap and completely backfired on him, and also, she is horrible at giving advice.

He’s about to say these words almost exactly after she picks up, but switches gears at the last minute when he notices her breathing is heavier than usual and there’s a small amount of background noise coming through the comm.

“Are you on patrol?” he asks, and wheels his chair back from the computer a few feet to notice that it has in fact started to get dark outside the immense windows on either side of the mainframe, which means that back in Gotham it’s prime time for patrol.

“Yeah,” She says, “What’s up.”

“I can call back later-”

Stephanie cuts him off with a rude noise and says, “Please.  I can multitask.  What’s up?”

Tim is quiet for a moment and then says, “Can you?”

“Boy Wonder I swear to Bat-God, I can and will kick your ass all the way back to Gotham if I have to.  What.  Is.  Up?”

Tim snorts and says.  “I just wanted you to know your brilliant plan nearly got me a broken rib.”

“What?”  Stephanie yells, and then, “Wait, wait, hold on a second.”

Distantly, Tim can hear her yelling at someone who he thinks at first might be a criminal, but when the words, Brat, knife, and demon oompa loompa, come through the comm., he realizes instantly that it must be Damian.

“Sorry, I’m back.” She says after the commotion has died down.

“Is that Drake?” Tim can hear Damian clearly now in the background.  “Tell him to stop playing child’s games with his joke of a team and start pulling his meager and pitiful weight here where it is actually needed!”

“You weigh less than he does, Robin.” Stephanie says.

“And I pull five times the weight, as is expected from someone of my advanced abilities!”

Stephanie sighs and says, “R.R., Robin says he loves and misses you, and hopes you come home soon.”

“I know that’s not what he said,” Tim says, at the same time Damian screeches on the other line, “That is not what I said!”

“Anyway,” Stephanie says, and Tim can still hear Damian grumbling something through his comm. but it’s too drowned out for Tim to decipher, which is probably for the best. “What’s this about you sabotaging my brilliant plan with your poor people skills?”

“I didn’t sabotage it,” Tim says.  “It was a bad plan.  I asked Kon if he was okay, and he freaked out.”

After a long and drawn out groan, Stephanie says, “What was the context, though?  Did you just go up and randomly ask him, or what?”

“He was - I don’t know, he had just had a fight with Cassie.  I think they broke up.  So when he came out of her room, I asked him if he was okay.”

“You - wait, hold up.  So you’re telling me you basically stood outside Wonder Girl’s room and eavesdropped on her and Superboy breaking up, and let’s not forget Superboy has super hearing, so he probably knew you were there the whole time, and then you asked him if he was okay.”

“Yeah?” Tim says.

“Oh my God.” Stephanie’s voice is muffled and Tim can perfectly picture her standing on some rooftop with her head in her hands.  He mentally adds Damian in the background, glaring uselessly.

“What?” Tim says.

“You are the stupidest boy genius I’ve ever known.”

“What?”

“I know you’re not this socially inept when you’re undercover.”

“Stephanie.” Tim says, and glances at the monitor.  It’s going to take all night for these diagnostics to finish running.

“Look,” Stephanie says, “I’m sure you meant well, but think about how Superboy probably feels.  He’s obviously messed up about something right now, then his best friend eavesdrops on him breaking up with his long-term girlfriend and turns around and plays dumb about it.”

Tim looks at the screen, thinks about the lump in his chair, and stands up.  If anything goes wrong with his scripts, he’ll just fix it in the morning.

“Don’t get me wrong,” Stephanie adds after a moment of Tim’s silence.  “It sounds like he way overreacted.  But you probably could have been a little more tactful, considering you already know something is wrong.”

“Sure,” Tim says, and then, “Can you hold on a second?  I’m going to my room, I don’t want to have this conversation while I’m walking through the lounge.”

“Yeah, fine,” Stephanie says.  “I think we just found our guy anyway.”

Tim listens to the sounds of Stephanie and Damian chasing someone down as he rides up the elevator.  Somewhere in the back of his head he wonders if it’s a bad thing that he finds the ambiance of it comforting, but then he hears Damian’s vulgar and descriptive death threats after they finally catch their perp and Stephanie’s borderline Joker-laugh echoes loudly in his ear, and Tim almost feels sorry for the guy.

“Alright!” Stephanie says just as Tim gets to his admittedly dusty and largely unused bedroom.  “Nice work, Bat Brat.  Time for Waffles.”

“Finally.” Damian’s voice huffs distantly.

“Sounds like you two are getting along pretty well,” Tim says, and pulls his laptop out of the duffle bag he’d tossed halfheartedly onto his bed when he had arrived.

Stephanie makes an unidentifiable noise and says, “We have our ups and downs.”

“Correction,” Comes Damian’s voice, strangely louder than it had been before.  “I have ups, only you have downs.”

“I wasn’t talking to you, Robin.”  A sound comes out of Stephanie’s mouth which Tim knows instinctively is always paired with her tongue sticking out at someone.  Damian, in this case.  “Oh hey,” she says.  “Is that ice cream?”

The comm. is quiet for a moment and Tim sits back against the headboard of his bed and links his laptop up to the Tower’s Network.  The brief silence is peaceful until Stephanie makes some kind of horrible gagging noise and says, “Why did you lick it?  You’re sick!”

“It’s a raspberry freezie pop.”  Damian says.

“God.  Oh my god.”  Stephanie makes another gagging noise, and then says, “Must be Jason.”

“Could be Dick,” Tim says.  “He eats those on patrol constantly.”

“Nah,” Stephanie says.  “He’s taking care of some business in Bloodhaven tonight.  Why do you think I got stuck babysitting the Brat?”  She ignores the offended noise that Damian makes and then says, “Whad’ya say, Robin?  Should we track him down?”

“Absolutely.”

“What?” Tim says.  “Stephanie, no.  Do not go looking for Jason.”

“Too late.”

“Stephanie, I’m serious.  He’s dangerous.”

“Didn’t seem too dangerous in my bed last night.”  She laughs and then says, “Wink.”

It takes all of Tim’s combined training to keep from choking on his own spit.

“Good god,” Damian says in the background.

“Kidding!” Stephanie says.  “I’m kidding.”  When Tim still isn’t capable of responding she says, “Tim I’m kidding.  It was a joke.  I haven’t been sleeping with Jason Todd, I swear on my life.”

Finally Tim manages to let out a long and agonized breath.

“We may have run into each other at Starbucks the other day, though.”

“Stay away from him, Stephanie!” Tim says.

“Listen,” Stephanie laughs.  “About Superboy:  just give him some time to cool off okay?”

“Stephanie do not change the subject.”

“You guys are literally the reason the word bromance exists.  And that’s not necessarily a compliment, but regardless, you’ll be fine.”

“This is not a joke, he’s crazy Steph!”

“Hey, I gotta go, I think I see Red Hood’s big red head.”

“Don’t talk to him, Stephanie-!”  She disconnects her comm. before he can say anything else and Tim has half a mind to leave the tower right now and fly all the way back to Gotham just so he can kick the shit out of Jason’s tight pant wearing, name stealing, ass, except when he looks up Kon is standing in his open doorway.

“Somethin’ up with Batgirl?” Kon asks.

It’s a normal enough question that Tim forgets Kon is supposed to be mad at him and says, “Yeah, everything.  She’s been hanging out with Jason.  Casually!”

“Is that the one with the shoulder wound fetish?” Kon moves further into the room and Tim can see his miffed expression clearly in the glow of his bedside lamp.  “Didn’t he… break into the tower once and try to kill you?”

“In my own costume, yes.”

“Jesus.”

“Yeah.” Tim says, and stares angrily at his computer screen.

“Guess I’m not much better than him, huh?” Kon says and Tim’s head whips to the side.

“What?”  He says.  “Why would you say that?”

“Well.” Kon laughs nervously and ruffles his hair into a mess.  “I did kinda nearly choke you to death this afternoon.”

“That…” Tim says, “Is a gross exaggeration.”

Kon shrugs and refuses to meet Tim’s eyes.  “Not from where I’m standing.”

“I could breathe just fine.”

“It didn’t sound that way.”

“Kon, trust me.  I was in absolutely no danger of losing consciousness.  You were just mad, I shouldn’t…” Tim turns back to his computer, bites his lip, and says, “I shouldn’t have been listening in on your fight.”

This, Tim realizes belatedly, may not have been the best thing to say because it seems to remind Kon why he was angry in the first place and he says, “Yeah dude.  You really shouldn’t have.”

Tim chews some more on the inside of his lip and says, “I know.  I’m sorry.”

“And you gotta get those camera’s outta my house before I start punching holes in the wall trying to find them.”

“They’re for emergencies.” Tim says.

“Yeah, but, dude!” Kon throws his arms out to the side.  “Come on!  I get that it was hard for you after Bart and I died.  I get that you were born a paranoid freak and you can’t help it, but my whole life can’t be on display twenty-four/seven for you to snoop around in just because you’re worried I’m going to randomly die again.”

Tim doesn’t say anything in response to this and the silence between them stretches on for so many miles even Bart would have trouble running it straight without stopping to rest.  Eventually Kon moves to sit down on the edge of Tim’s bed and says, “Look.  The point is I’m sorry I freaked out at you earlier.  Potential attempted murder aside—,”

“You didn’t,” Tim says, and glares to get his point across.  The cowl probably makes it more intense that it’s meant to be, and honestly his head is starting to get really sweaty, so he reaches up to pull it back.

Kon’s serious expression breaks for a brief moment and he snorts and says, “Stunning.”

Tim continues to glare and Kon manages to regain his sobriety.

“The point is,” he says again.  “I’ve been freaking out every other minute lately, and I guess it’s been pretty obvious.  I just can’t handle the surveillance right now, okay?  So can you please get rid of the cameras?”

“I can disable them for a while, sure.” Tim says.

“No,” Kon shakes his head and looks caught between annoyance and fondness.  “No, Tim I need them gone.  Like, one-hundred-percent, never coming back ever again, gone.”

Tim blinks.  “Kon-,”

“No, no ‘Kon’.  You can’t ‘Kon’ your way out of this,” Kon says, and Tim knows something really is wrong when he doesn’t pause to laugh at his own joke, might not even be aware he made it.  “Normally I would totally love to let you creepily watch me sleep and jerk off into my trashcan on the daily-,”

“I do not-,”

“But,” Kon stresses the word.  “I just – I’ve got so much shit swimming around in my head right now, if I have to worry about you watching my every move at the same time I’m going to lose it.  I am seriously, really going to lose it.”  Kon shakes his hands in a throttling motion for emphasis but Tim doesn’t need the visual aid to hear the way his voice trembles slightly.

“Yeah,” Tim says.  “Okay.  I’ll stop by Monday.”

The sigh Kon lets out is so big that Tim thinks for a minute it might be the start of latent ice breath powers before he hangs his head and says, “Thank you.  Thank you.”

“Sure,” Tim says, debating with great turmoil whether or not he should put a hand on Kon’s shoulder.  He thinks he should.  It feels like that’s the sort of thing you do when your best friend is obviously in some kind of emotional distress, but Tim’s not sure how Kon would take it. “It’s no big deal,” He says.  He’s being stupid. Kon would take it fine.  Kon would probably appreciate it.  Kon’s a big dumb goofball who gives out free hugs like a broken slot machine that won’t stop spewing coins.  Kon would definitely be fine with Tim putting a comforting hand on his shoulder.

“Yeah it is,” Kon says, and sits up and grins.  The moment is over.  It would absolutely be weird if Tim put a hand on Kon’s shoulder now.  God.  “If you were anymore paranoid you’d be Batman himself.  I know you, man.”

“Is that supposed to be insulting?”  Tim says.

Kon snorts.  “Of course not.  No, it was totally a compliment.”  He beams and Tim thinks he may be getting whiplash form the one-eighty Kon’s emotions are doing right now.  “So, we’re cool?”

“I wish you’d tell me what’s going on, but, despite common believe I’m not actually as paranoid as Batman.  Not even close.  And I do trust you, Kon.  So, yeah,” Tim says.  “We’re cool.”

“Cool.”

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Kon spends a lot of that weekend moping around Tim’s room, watching him write scripts and complaining loudly that he can’t freely roam the tower while Cassie is on the war path.  Whenever he gets too pouty about it Tim reminds him whose fault that is and Kon settles down.  Rinse and repeat.  It’s a process.

Bart brings them meals a couple of times – or he tries to at least, there’s not much left of them by the time they actually get to Tim’s room – but aside from a small hostage situation that the swat team has mostly dealt with when the Titans show up, it really is a quiet weekend.

When they all finally depart on Sunday, Tim swears to Kon he’ll be at the Kent farm bright and early on Monday morning.  Kon points at him and tells him six a.m. sharp.  Tim hums and says maybe more like eight or nine.  They smile and scoff at each other.  It’s almost normal.

As it turns out, it’s actually about ten fifteen when he lands the bat jet behind the barn.  It was barely a few months ago now that he and Kon managed to cajole Clark into letting them build a bunker for it to be stored in during visits.  The cloak worked well enough in the past, but it wasn’t going to be fool proof if the Kent’s had visitors while Tim was over and someone drove their truck into a forty-five ton invisible jet.  Besides, Martha loved having the extra space to store her salt and pepper shaker collection, which Tim admires with great familiarity as he ascends the stairs of the bunker.

Kon is waiting for him upon his emergence from the ground hatch with an irritated expression and crossed arms.  “You are so late.” He says.

“Something came up that needed my attention.” Tim says.

Kon’s eyes narrow.  “Yeah like what?”

“Sleeping.” Tim says and smiles when Kon groans loudly and throws his arms in the air, floating upwards several inches.

“Breakfast is over, Tim!” Kon says, flying backwards in front of Tim as they approach the front of the house.  “I had to eat all six of your pancakes myself.”

“What is it they’re always saying about supers and martyr complexes?”  Tim asks.

Martha Kent is waiting for them when they get to the front porch, smiling easily.  “It’s so good to see you again, Timothy.”

“You too, Mrs. Kent.”

Martha makes a noise of endearment and opens up her arms, “Come here, you.”

“Oh--,” Tim says as he is hugged around the chest by Martha Kent, who, despite her short and stooped stature, rivals Kon’s hugs in terms of strength.  “—kay,” It dawns on Tim for perhaps he first time that the famous Super family bear hug may not actually be a Kryptonian thing so much as it is a Kent thing.

“Don’t tell Conner, but I stashed a few pancakes in the oven to keep warm for you,” She whispers in Tim’s ear before letting him go.

“Hey!” Kon says.

“Thanks Mrs. Kent, but I ate just before I left.  I’m really not too hungry.”  Tim says, following Martha past the porch and into the kitchen.  “Maybe Krypto will want them?”

“Maybe I’ll want them,” Kon mutters.

“You,” Martha says, picking up the newspaper on the kitchen table and swatting Kon’s elbow with it, “Do not need any more food!”

“I’m a growing boy!” Kon says.

The snort that comes out of Tim is meant to be derisive but it abruptly turns undignified without his consent, and a short, loud laugh bursts out of Kon.  Tim pretends nothing happened, and Martha points her newspaper at Tim and says, “One of these days I’m going to get you to sit down for a full, home cooked meal and you’re going to eat your fill or I’ll sick Clark on you!”

Tim beams at her and says, “Yes Ma’am.”

Martha swoons just a smidge and Kon groans and says, “You didn’t used to be like this.  I remember you when you were an uptight, shorty, nerd!”

“Conner!” Martha says, “You shouldn’t talk about your friends like that.  Tim has always been charming.”

Tim turns his smile on Kon who rolls his eyes and says, “You didn’t know him, Ma.  He was not charming.”  When Tim gives no response besides his continued grinning, Kon makes a noise of disgust and says, “Cut it out, you’re giving me the creeps!  And you’ve got work to do, dude.”  He claps his hands twice.  “Chop, Chop!”

Tim stops smiling.  Honestly it’s a relief, his jaw was starting to hurt.  Smiling for extended periods of time is not something Tim is exactly practiced at.  “Alright.  We’ll start in the living room.”

It takes them at least half of the day to even get to Kon’s room.  Drilling through the walls to remove the devices is time consuming enough, but caulking, sanding, and re-painting takes even longer, even with Kon’s help.

Around Two-Thirty Kon has mentioned his Kryptonian metabolism at least four times in the past half hour, and his complaining to working ratio is at about 70/30 so Tim sets his tool kit down on the floor in the doorway of Kon’s room says, “Okay, I’m starting to get a little hungry too.”

Kon immediately replies, “God,” And all but drops the bucket filled with Tim’s camera parts on the ground.  “I’ll go see what Ma’s got cooking,” he says, and takes off down the stairs.  Tim figures Kon will bring something up for him when it’s ready and decides to keep working.  Mostly because Tim is pretty sure Kon knows about the camera above his door but not the one in his closet which isn’t actually imbedded into the wall, and Tim wants to get it out before Kon has the chance to notice it.

It’s a blessedly quick job and Tim has the camera out in less than a minute.  He’s pulling his head out of Kon’s curtain of flannel shirts when he notices something leather stuffed onto the far end of the rack.  He reaches for it, mostly just to satisfy his own suspicion, and says, “Huh,” When Kon’s old Suberboy jacket comes off of its hanger.  “He just keeps it in his closet.  Literally anyone could see it in here.”  Tim shrugs the jacket on, partially because he’s starting to get goosebumps from Martha’s army of air conditioners currently at war with Kansas’ late August heat wave, and partially because he wants to torture Kon.

Speak of the devil, Tim thinks when he hears Kon choking on something behind him.  Tim turns to see Kon standing in his doorway, holding a half-eaten hot dog in one hand.  His cheeks are puffed out and there is a distinctly red tint to his whole face.  He coughs once more, swallows and says, “Dude!”  He sets the plate of hotdogs he’s holding down on his dresser and crowds himself into Tim’s personal space, looking frantic.  “Take it off, where did you get that?”

“I’m cold.” Tim says.  “And your closet.”

“You were going through my stuff?”  Kon almost looks angry, but he mostly looks skeptical.

“No,” Tim says.  “I was cold.  I was looking for something to wear.”

“And you picked that?” Kon is hissing at him now and Tim mostly tries to stop his mouth from quirking up at the corners but fails pretty spectacularly anyway.  “Oh my God,” Kon says.  “You’re doing this on purpose.”

“No.” Tim says.

“I hate you.” Kon says.

“You should let me keep it.  You never wear it anymore.” Tim says.

“Only if you wear it in the batcave.” Kon says.

“Hmm, that’s not going to happen.”

“Then you can’t have it.”

Tim huffs and tugs on the lapels, heading over to his tool box to start working on the camera above Kon’s door.

“Dude, seriously take it off.”  Kon says.  “You’re gonna get sanding dust all over it.  That thing’s real leather, you know.”

Tim turns around and squints at him.  “You used to fight slime monsters and giant robots in this thing and you’re worried about me getting dust on it?”

“That was back when I had Rex to order me twenty more if one of them got wrecked.  That’s the last one I’ve got!”

“Hmmm,” Tim says.

“I am dead serious, Tim.  If you mess up my jacket I will pound you into the ground.”

“Oh,” Tim says, pulling a power drill out of his box and revving it.  “You’ll pound me into the ground, huh?”

“Jesus,” Kon says.  “Jesus, Tim!”

Much to Kon’s immense displeasure, Tim continues to wear his jacket for the remainder of their work.  It’s a little bit weird, Tim thinks, almost like they’ve switched roles from their old Young Justice days, and Tim’s not used to being the instigator of trouble, but as much fuss as Kon puts up, Tim can tell he’s enjoying himself, so Tim keeps the jacket on.

They’ve just finished painting over the last of the camera holes in the hallway when Tim hears the screen door creak open downstairs and Clark’s voice echoes through the house.

“Oh God,” Kon says, hovering near the ceiling with his paintbrush dangling dangerously just over Tim’s head.

“I didn’t know Clark was coming,” Tim says, stepping to the side and out of the line of fire just as a drop of pale yellow paint hits the rags they have laid out on the floor.

“Me neither.”

“What’s for dinner?”  Clark asks Martha, both of whom Tim can see through the railing of the stairs.

“Belinda,” Martha says, and holds up a golden brown chicken in a glass pan.  Her oven mitts also have chickens on them.  “It’ll be a few minutes before she’s ready to serve, so I hope you’re not too hungry.”

Tim takes a moment to shudder at what passes for normalcy in farm country, and if the look on Kon’s face is anything to go by, he does too.  “I think I can wait a little while,” Clark says.

“Good.  The boys are upstairs if you want to say hi,” Martha says and turns back to the counter and out of Tim’s sights.

“Boys?” Clark asks.

“Tim’s here, helping Kon remove all those cameras.”

“Ah,” Clark says.

Next to Tim, Kon makes a despairing noise and loses several inches of altitude at the same time Clark’s footsteps can be heard pounding up the creaking staircase at a jovial pace.   He arrives at the top and peers down the hallway at the two of them, smiling.  “Conner, Tim,” he says.  “How’s the re-modeling going?”

Tim smiles back and says, “We’re almost done.”

“Finally,” Kon adds.  “We should have invited Bart.  Would’a taken a couple hours at most.”

“Yeah,” Tim says, “And all my cameras would be trashed.”

“Great,” Clark says, either oblivious to their banter, or ignoring it completely.  “You boys want to finish up and then come down to help me set the table?”

“Anything to get me away from these paint fumes,” Kon says, and sets his brush down on the open paint can.

“Um,” Tim says, “I should probably get back to Gotham.”  The twin stares he receives from both Kon and Clark after saying this aren’t exactly unexpected, but they are certainly undesired and, quite frankly, disturbing.  It’s never been more apparent that they’re cut from the same genome than it is now.

“Tim,” Kon says.

“Nonsense,” Clark says.  “Stay for dinner.  Stay the night!”

“I – no.” Tim shakes his head.  “I really can’t.  I’ve got patrol tonight.  Thanks, though.”

Clark smiles at him knowingly, and Tim is incredibly relieved that he won’t have to push this any further, but then Clark says with undue cheer.  “I won’t have it.  You’re staying for dinner.”

 “I-,”

“And then you’ll stay the night.  I’ve already talked to Dick.  Says you haven’t taken a night off in weeks.”  Clark gives them a little wave and says, “I’ll see you boys downstairs!”  And then he’s gone.

“What…” Tim says and turns to Kon who is frowning at him, arms crossed.

“I can’t believe you tried to ditch me with Clark.”

 “What just happened?”

“You don’t deserve to wear that jacket,” Kon says.         

When they do get downstairs the table is already set and Martha is just putting the roast in the center of it.  Clark is grinning at them from across the room, oven mitts on both hands, holding a steaming serving dish filled with green beans.  He doesn’t even need oven mitts, Tim thinks.  It’s not like a hot dish could burn Superman.

Everyone Tim knows is always going on about how manipulative Batman is, how smart, and sneaky he is about getting everyone to do exactly what he wants without having to even lift a finger.  Nobody ever mentions Clark Kent’s unassuming, easy smile, or the way his eyes crinkle behind his glasses just slightly when everything goes according to plan.  Honestly, as far as Tim’s concerned, Clark Kent is way more intimidating than The Batman has ever been.

“I’m so glad you’re going to stay, Tim,” Martha says, sitting down next to Clark.  “One of these days we’ve got to have a Wayne-Kent family dinner.  A real big one, we can have it outside in the yard, barbeque style.  Oh!” She says, unfolding her napkin with a flick, “We can have Stacy!  She’s getting old, I was going to use her for jerky and bacon, but she’d make great pulled pork sandwiches!”

Kon sends Tim a horrified sideways glance and mouths, “I like Stacy.”

Tim nearly laughs.

“There’s an idea,” Clark says.  “But good luck getting Bruce to show.”

“Oh,” Martha waves her hand at Clark.  “Give me five minutes with the man, he’ll be begging me for an invitation.”

“You may be able to take Bruce,” Tim says, “But I don’t think even you’re ready to handle Damian.”

“Please.” Martha cuts off Belinda’s perfectly roasted wing.  “I raised Clark, didn’t I?”

Clark sputters and turns an obvious shade of red.  “Ma!”

Dinner progresses at a pleasant place with no shortage of easy banter and friendly mockery.  Tim doesn’t realize how long it’s been since he’s had something like this until it’s over and he’s helping Martha bus dishes.  It’s nice, and Tim knows that despite the bullying he probably needed this, but it also makes him ache for that short period of time in his life when he had a family to sit down and be normal with.  It’s not as though he doesn’t think of Bruce and Dick and Alfred as his family, it’s just that when the Bats do normal, it feels like an act.  When the Kent’s do normal, it feels real somehow.  Tim’s not entirely sure what the difference is, but he knows it’s there.

Clark sets up the blow up mattress in Kon’s room, on the wall opposite his bed, just beside the door, and Tim helps him get sheets and blankets on it while Kon takes a shower.  They work mostly in silence until the end when Clark claps his hands on his knees and stands up, smiling at Tim like he can read minds.

“Um,” Tim says.

“I know it’s already been said, but thank you for staying, Tim.”

Tim nods.  “Sure.”  Then he says.  “Clark, is everything okay?”

Clark sighs and tilts his head back to gaze at the glow-in-the-dark stars stuck onto the ceiling of Kon’s room.  Tim’s pretty sure they’ve been here as long as Clark has.  “I think things are going to get worse before they get better,” Clark says.  “But they will get better.”

“And you call Bruce cryptic.” Tim says.

Clark smiles at him.  “You’re a smart kid, Tim.” He says.  “Quite frankly, you’re brilliant.  I know that if you really wanted to you could figure out everything that’s been going on in Conner’s life recently, and more.  The fact that you’re waiting for him to tell you himself says a lot about what kind of person you are.”

Tim’s not quite sure how to take that until Clark walks over and abruptly hugs him, and the squeezing is definitely a Kent thing.

“You’re a good friend, Tim.  Conner’s lucky to have you.”  Clark lets go, says goodnight, and leaves the room just as Kon is coming in, wet hair sticking up in three-thousand different directions, and looking like he’s just stepped onto the set of the Twilight Zone.

“Were you and Clark just hugging?” Kon asks.

Tim holds up his hands and says, “He hugged me, I did not reciprocate.”

Kon frowns and sticks his head through the open doorway to yell at Clark, “Don’t hug my friends!”   Tim can hear Clark’s laughter floating up from downstairs.

After borrowing a pair of pajama pants and one of Kon’s Superboy shirts to sleep in, Tim and Kon both settle into their respective beds, and Tim thinks, listening to Kon yawn goodnight, that maybe Clark’s weirdly vague comments were just that.  Maybe Tim has blown this whole thing out of proportion, because quite frankly, Kon has been his normal, regular self the entire day.  Whatever it is that got him to break up with Cassie and ask Tim to remove all of his surveillance equipment, it’s obviously not a big enough deal to effect Kon on a daily basis.  The thought allows Tim to relax somewhat.  He feels almost like a muscle he hadn’t realized he’d been clenching is finally uncoiling itself and he actually doesn’t realize it when he falls asleep.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Tim wakes to a high pitched ringing sound that he thinks must be Kon’s god awful alarm clock, going off at unholy hours in the morning as Tim knows it does because Kon lives on a farm and has chores.  It’s not until he hears the loud crack of splintering wood and plaster being blown apart, and a sharp yell to his right that he realizes the ringing is not Kon’s alarm clock.  It’s his heat vision.  Tim sits up instantly and looks at Kon’s bed where Kon is sat bolt upright.  The beams of red streaming from his eyes have already blasted a hole in the wall across from him, and the room is bathed in sinister light.

“Kon!” Tim yells at him, and Kon flinches but doesn’t react otherwise.  “Kon, close your eyes!”

Not even a second goes by before Clark is in the doorway, yelling Kon’s name, and finally, Kon closes his eyes with a shuddered intake of breath and the light disappears.

“Shit,” Kon whispers, and buries his face in his hands. “Shit.”

“It’s okay,” Clark says and moves swiftly to sit beside Kon, resting a hand on his back.  “Conner, it’s alright.”

“Shit.” Kon’s voice is pitched high, and shaking, and Tim watches silently as he leans forward and rests his forehead on his knees.  “I’m sorry,” he says.

“It’s fine, Conner,” Clark murmurs.

“Shit, I’m sorry…”

“We can fix the wall, nobody’s hurt, everything is okay.”

Kon peeks at Tim through his fingers and takes a shuddering breath.  The dawning realization that all Kon had to do was look at Tim by accident when those lasers were beaming out of his eyes and Tim would be maimed or dead hits Tim at about the same time it hits Kon, who takes another deep breath and says, “Oh fuck,” and then he sits up and breathes again, or tries to.  It gets caught in his throat and comes out as a rasp.

“Conner?” Clark says.

Kon’s chest is now actively heaving with the effort of trying to take in breaths that don’t seem to like they want to enter his lungs, and he may not know exactly how to deal with rampant heat vision, but if there’s one thing Tim Drake is a pro at, it’s suppressing panic attacks.  He kicks off the thin blanket covering his legs and scrambles across the room and onto Kon’s bed.

 

“Kon,” Tim says and holds his hand out between them.  “Take my hand.  Squeeze it.”  Kon looks at it for a moment like its kryptonite, but grabs on after Tim shakes it at him.  “Breathe with me,” Tim says, and starts to make a show out of taking deep, even breaths.

It takes a few agonizing minutes, but Kon manages to catch on and starts breathing normally again.

“I’m fine,” Tim says.  “Ma’s fine.  You did good.”

Kon nods, still breathing heavy.  “Yeah,” He says.  “Sure.  Blew a fuckin hole in the wall.”

“It’s not even that big.” Tim says.  It’s about the size of a basketball.

“We’ll have it patched in less than a day,” Clark says.  He rubs Kon’s back comfortingly and says, “You going to be okay?”

Kon nods.

“I’m going to get you a glass of water.  I’ll be right back.”  Clark says and heads towards the door.  When he gets there he looks back and says, “Tim?”  Jerking his head towards the hallway.

Tim looks at Kon who rolls his eyes and says, “Yeah sure.  Go talk about my latest emotional episode in the kitchen together.  It’s not like I have super hearing.”

“Conner.”  Clark says.

“What?” Kon says and spreads his arms out.

Clark sighs and Tim looks at Kon one last time before following Clark out into the hallway and down the stairs.

“What happened?” Clark asks.

“Um,” Tim says.  “I don’t know exactly.  I think he had some kind of night terror?  Or so I would assume.  He was non-responsive until you showed up.”

Clark nods, pulling a glass from the kitchen cupboard.

“Has he had panic attacks before this?” Tim asks.

“No,” Clark says.  “This is the first.”  He pulls a pitcher of water from the fridge. “I’m glad you were here.  Honestly I’d have had no idea what to do.”

“You’re Superman,” Tim says.  “I think you would have figured it out.”

“Saving people from burning buildings is one thing, Tim.  Helping them on the road to recovering from their trauma afterwards is another thing entirely, and one I can’t say I’ve ever actually dealt with.”  He sighs and hands Tim the glass of water.  “Would you take this up to Conner?  Make sure he’s okay?”

“Sure,” Tim says.

“I’m going to go check on Ma.”

“Hey, wait.” Tim says.  Clark pauses just before he reaches the stairs and turns to look back at him.  “I know it’s not really my business, but… I want to make sure,” Tim sighs. “Whatever’s going on, it - it seems serious, so… I just want to make sure Kon’s, if he needs to, that he’s, you know, seeing someone.  A therapist.”

Clark nods.  “He is.”

“Okay… okay, good.”  Tim watches him ascend the stairs and follows shortly after.  When he gets to Kon’s room, the light has been turned off and Kon’s laid back down, facing the wall.

“Hey,” Tim says.  He walks towards the bed and sets Kon’s water down on his nightstand.  The bed is literally so small Tim can’t even sit on it without bumping into Kon’s back.

After a few long seconds Kon says, “Clark tell you all about how messed up I am now?”

“No,” Tim says.  “He didn’t tell me anything.”

Kon snorts.

“I thought you had super hearing,” Tim says.

“I didn’t really want to hear anything,” Kon answers.

“If you want to tell me-,”

“I know,” Kon says.  “I can.”  He takes a deep breath.  “Is it okay if I don’t want to?”

“Yeah,” Tim says.  “That’s fine too.”

“Kay, cause I don’t.”  Kon says.  “No offense.”

Tim looks at Kon’s profile in the muted light of the moon streaming through his window.  This time, Tim does put his hand on Kon’s shoulder.  “None taken,” he says, and then he stands up and heads back to his own blow up bed.

“Goodnight,” Kon says.  “Again.”

“Night, Kon.” Tim says, and knows he’s not going to go back to sleep.


	2. October

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm posting this a day early because I work crazy hours this weekend!
> 
> I also have a couple things to say/forewarn about concerning this chapter, namely that it will contain a conversation about past sexual abuse and rape. 
> 
> The specific incident mentioned takes place between Superboy v3 #25-#30 if you're interested in looking it up. For the purposes of this fic, I read between the panels a little bit, but Kon and Knockout having sexual interactions is heavily implied in the comic in a really weird way, and basically any issue of Superboy you read with Knockout in it contains gratuitous and creepy come-ons from Knockout to Kon which I'm pretty sure were mostly intended to be a weird teenage male fantasy thing, but which definitely come off as a creepy 30 year old stripper trying to seduce a 15 year old clone who's been alive for less than a year and like... clearly doesn't fully understand what's going on.
> 
> ANYWAY, I could write a dissertation about uncomfortable Knockout makes me in Superboy v3, but instead I just wrote a fic about it.
> 
> Also! Way less important but still noteworthy: I know Tim's birthday is in July or something, but for the purposes of this fic, it's in January. Mostly because this fic takes place a little bit after/right around the end of pre-Flashpoint/New 52 and it felt weird to have him still be 17 for like a whole other year after that.

“Tim.”

Dick’s request that Tim show up to the Batcave for patrol tonight means that Tim has to wire his monitor feeds through the batcomputer if he wants to be able to check up on the Titans.  Most of his screens are void of activity.  Stephanie’s living room is empty.  Cassie’s mom is loading dishes into the washer in their kitchen. Bart’s room is barren save for the many clothes strewn across his floor like a second carpet.

“Tim.”

After several keystrokes, Tim shifts Bart’s monitor through the various Tower security systems until he finds the Titans in the rec room, apparently engaged in a heavily competitive ping pong tournament.  Kon doesn’t appear to be involved, or even there, so Tim finishes flipping through the cameras until he determines that Kon is not in the Tower at all, or on the grounds for that matter.

“Tim.”

He sighs and let’s himself glance briefly up at the black square in the middle of his monitors where Kon’s bedroom should be.  Even after all these weeks he’s still surprised to see it empty for some reason.  Tim doesn’t know why he can’t just put someone else’s feed there instead.

“Timothy Jackson Drake-Wayne!”  Something hits Tim in the back of his head.  It feels like a glove, and Tim spins his chair around to see Stephanie standing behind him with a bare hand on her hip.

“What?” Tim says.

“Get your big butt out of that chair, we’re patrolling together tonight.  Batman’s orders.”

Tim eyes Dick across the cave, falling into a defensive stance in front of Damian who is staring at him boredly.  “Tell Dick I don’t take orders from Batman anymore.” Tim says, and gets out of the chair at the same time that a suspiciously familiar shadow looms over him.

“Since when do you not take orders from Batman?” Bruce asks, and Tim whirls around to see him, possibly smirking, with the cowl down.

“Since he fired me,” Tim says.

“Ah,” Bruce is definitely smirking.  “Well I hope you can stand to take one or two from him tonight.”

“I can probably manage,” Tim says, and ignores Steph groaning in the background.

“Good, because I need you and Batgirl to do some reconnaissance.  Penguin’s been pretty active outside his territory recently.” Bruce moves in front of Tim and pulls up a map of Gotham on the monitors.  “His men have been spotted on Sandy Hook island participating in several illegal weapons sales, the merchandise of which used to be long to one Roman Sionis.”

“So Penguin’s stealing from Black Mask.” Tim says.

“Technically,” Bruce says, “he’s paying for everything he gets.  But all of my sources indicate that Black Mask himself is not aware of these sales.  This is especially likely considering the deals themselves are not being made within the borders of either Black Mask or Penguin’s territory.”  Bruce pulls up a detailed map of Sandy Hook Island. “Which is why I need you and Batgirl to observe one of these transactions in person and evaluate the situation.  If my information is correct, one should be taking place tonight at two A.M. near the warehouse district.”

 “Yeah, except Sandy Hook is Jason’s island,” Steph says, leaning over the back of the chair to inspect the map.  “He’ll be pissed if he finds out Penguin’s trying to do deals under his nose and on his turf.”

That spit choking sensation from before is starting to creep back up Tim’s throat, and Bruce’s eyes are thinly slit, which Tim supposes is as close as Bruce ever gets to choking on his own spit.

“What?” Stephanie says, looking between them.  “He will be!”

“How do you know Jason’s taken control of the island?” Bruce asks.

The situation dawns visibly on Stephanie’s face and she says, “D-doesn’t… everybody know that?”

“No,” Bruce says.

For a moment, Stephanie is silent.  Then she smirks at him and leans back, putting her hands on her hips and looking righteously smug.  “Guess I’m a better detective than you thought, huh?”

“Or,” Bruce says, and moves his looming from Tim to Stephanie.  “You’re hiding something.”

The smirk is wiped straight off of Steph’s face.  “Jeez!”  She throws her hands up in the air and makes a loud, defensive noise.  “You have coffee with a guy two times, and suddenly you’re hiding something,” She says, making finger quotes in the air.

“ _Two_ times?” Tim says. “I thought it was just the _one_ time.”

“Yeah well, we hit it off what can I say.” She gins.  “He’s funny.”

“You knew about this?” Bruce says and turns back to Tim.

“I told her not to!” Tim says, and then, “Damian was there too!”

Bruce holds up a glove clad finger and says, “You know better than to pawn the blame off on others, Tim.”  But then he turns towards the training mats where Dick and Damian have been sparring casually and says, “Damian!” before looking back to Stephanie and saying, “This conversation is not over.”  He leaves them, cape rippling behind him and heads for the mats where Dick has just been kicked in the face and is on the ground, moaning dramatically while Damian stands at his father’s attention.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Sandy Hook is clear across Gotham from the cave, which means that Tim and Stephanie have an unfortunately lengthy amount of time to occupy with idle chatter while they travel, even at the advanced speeds of their respective cycles.

Tim is content to remain silent for most of it, or if he must talk, to talk only about the mission and its parameters, but it’s obvious from minute one that Steph has other ideas.

They are barely a block away from Wayne Enterprises Tower when she says, “So what’s up with Superboy?”

For several long minutes, Tim contemplates the pros and cons of refusing to reply at all.

“So what’s up with Superboy?” Stephanie says again, in the exact same tone.

Tim huffs.  “Nothing,” He says.  “I don’t know.”

“How did the camera excavation go?”

Red beams of heat busting through plaster and wood flash in Tim’s mind.  “It went fine.”

“Hmm,” Stephanie says, and then, “You think I should call Red Hood for backup?”

Tim jerks and his cycle nearly spins out beneath him. “What?  No!”

“It’s just,” Stephanie says, “You seem distracted tonight.”  She swerves around a police car stopped at a red light.  Tim watches it flash her in his mirror, but it doesn’t seem to care enough about Bat’s breaking petty road laws to actually pursue.  “Maybe if you talked to me about what’s going on I wouldn’t worry so much about needing backup.”

“If you’re trying to threaten me, you’re awful at it.” Tim says.  “There’s no way Jason would let you hook up our comm. frequency to his.”

“Hey, Red,” Stephanie says.

“What?” Tim asks, quite frankly annoyed with, and bordering on legitimately angry about, Stephanie’s weird, invasive mind games.  At the same time another voice replies over the comm., “At your service, Girlie.”

“You out tonight?” Stephanie asks.

“Sure am,” Jason says, sounding unusually pleased.  “What can I do for you?”

The spit choking, Tim thinks, may be turning into a serious medical condition.  As is the very real feeling that he may pass out of he doesn’t pull his bike over and take a few minutes to wheeze at length.  He settles for swerving in close to Stephanie’s cycle and kicking her in the leg.

Thankfully, she takes the hint.  “Nothing at the moment.  Just wanted to let you know Red Robin and I will be in your neighborhood doing some recon tonight.”

“Anything I should know about?” Jason asks.

“We’re not sure yet.  I’ll keep you posted.”

“Alright. Well you tell the short stack he better thank you cause you’re the only reason I’m letting him anywhere near my safe house.”

“Oh,” Tim says “That’s rich,” and wants to kick himself in the face.

“Is that him?” Jason says.  “Get off the line, asshole. This is a private conversation.”

“You’re on _our_ frequency.” Tim says.

“Yeah, well I’m about to beat your frequency to hell and back if you don't shut the fuck up and butt out”

“Strong words coming from a guy who’s already tried to murder me, twice.” Tim says.

“I already told you, I don’t remember that.”

“Oh, okay!” Tim says. “You don’t remember.  That’s just great.  Well in that case I forgive you.”

“You are a piece of goddamn work, kid, you know that?”

“I am not in the mood, tonight, Red Hood.”

“Oh, how cute.  You sound just like a little Bru-,”

“Okay,” Stephanie says.  “Not that I’m not loving and recording every minute of this for blackmail purposes, but R.R. and I have got some other issues to discuss, so I’ll call you later, Red, okay?”

Jason grumbles something that sounds like several very elaborate curses and Tim’s name, and then says, “Yeah fine.  See you Tuesday, Girlie,” and the line goes dead.

“Tuesday?” Tim says.

Stephanie takes one hand off of her handlebars and points at him.  “Don’t change the subject.”  She says.  “Also just so you know, if I wasn’t three-hundred-percent gunning for Jason myself, and if you weren’t ten times that percentage in love with Superboy, I’d be setting you two up.  The chemistry I just witnessed is beyond measure.”

Tim takes a moment to briefly reflect on the number of times he’s nearly died by his own hand in the past two months because of things Stephane has said to him and comes to the conclusion that maybe he should stop hanging out with her so often.  Then he says, “There are so many things wrong with what you just said to me I don’t even know where to start.”

“So,” Stephanie says.  “Superboy.  Spill.”

After groaning loudly, Tim says, “Look, Batgirl, I don’t know what you want to me to say.  I still don’t know what’s going on.  Just that whatever it is, it has to do with why he broke up with Wonder Girl, but the break up itself is just like a side note, as far as I can tell.  It’s barely related to the actual issue, whatever it is.”

“Hmm,” Stephanie says and turns sharply around a corner.  Tim follows and almost sighs in relief when he can see the bridge to Sandy Hook distantly nestled in a thick cloud of fog at the end of the street.

“Maybe he’s finally realized that he’s a huge queer,” Stephanie says, and throws Tim a goofy smile.

“That’s not it,” Tim says, returning Steph’s grin with the best impersonation of Bruce’s Big Trouble grimace that he can muster.

She snorts.  “Just because you’re convinced he’s straighter than Green Arrow’s arrows, which, for the record, aren’t that straight -- I know for a fact some of them curve -- doesn’t mean that-”

“No,” Tim says, “That’s - that’s not what I mean.”

“What do you mean that’s not what you mean?”

“I mean, I know he’s not straight.  He’s messed around with guys before.  Not a lot, but at least a few.”

“What.” Stephanie says.  “Wait, wait, what?”

“He brought a couple back to the cave once or twice when we were in Young Justice.  Girls too, obviously.  But sometimes they were guys, and they were definitely fooling around.”

“What?” Stephanie says, again.

“Plus he always used to say, “Hawaii’s got the babes, but Road Island’s got the dogs.” Which I never really figured out meant guys until he had started dating Cassie.  And by that time.  Well.”

“Wait,” Stephanie says.  “So what you’re telling me is you, you, Mr. Red-I can’t sleep with you because I think I’m in love with my best friend-Robin knew that Superboy liked dudes since practically day one, and you never said anything to him?”

“Can we drop this?” Tim says, just about ready to get on his knees and pray to God as they pass the threshold of the bridge.

“No way!” Stephanie says.

“Look,” Tim has to concentrate to keep his voice from clipping.  “I really don’t want to talk about this.  I worked way too hard to put all of that behind me when Superboy died, and I’d appreciate it if you would refrain from digging it back up for me, okay?  Whatever is going on with Superboy, it has nothing to do with some sudden sexual awakening on his part, or mine, for that matter.”

“Yikes,” Stephanie says, as the bridge supports blur past them.  “Somebody’s still not over their unrequited four year crush.”

“I said I don’t want to talk about this.”  Tim grinds out.  “We’re almost there, we need to focus on the mission.”

“Alright _Batman_ , Jeez.”

They manage to collect some decent intel before the night is over and Jason blessedly doesn’t show his irritating red face at any point during the night, which Tim thinks is more suspicious than it is a blessing really, but he’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth.  Not until it rears up and kicks him anyway.

It’s a long night though, and by the time Tim gets home, it’s nearly six A.M., which means in Smallville it’s more like five.  Tim takes about ten seconds to feel bad about calling Kon as he listens to the phone ring right up until the moment Kon answers in a low and gravely, “Hello?”

“I’m seventy percent positive that Stephanie and Jason are dating.  Or about to start dating.” Tim says, opening one of his cupboards and pulling out a box of protein bars.  He’s still in the undersuit of his costume and is seriously considering just passing out in it at this point, no matter how much of a stupid Dick Grayson move that may be.

“Huh?” Kon says.

“Stephanie and Jason flirted gratuitously in front of me tonight.” Tim says, ripping the box open and pulling out a bar.  “Romantic entanglement is imminent.”

“Is this an emergency?” Kon asks and he sounds one part still asleep, one part annoyed, and one part confused.

“Yes.” Tim says.  “Stephanie cannot date Jason Todd, Kon!”  He takes an admittedly angry bite out of his energy bar.

“Right.” Something thunks on the other end of the phone and Tim thinks Kon may be trying and failing to get out of his bed.  “What do you want me to do about it?”

Tim takes the protein bar with him as he heads for his room.  “You still haven’t seen my new place yet, have you?” he asks, flicking a switch on the wall beside his door, blacking out his windows.

Kon groans. “Please stop changing subjects, I can’t think fast right now.”

“You should come visit.  We can brainstorm then.” Tim says, sounding much more authoritative than he looks, crawling pathetically onto his bed.

“What?  Brainstorm what?“

“Ways to keep Jason out of Stephanie’s life. Or just out of Gotham entirely.  Whichever.  Both, preferably.”  Tim says, finally falling with a small huff onto his pillows.

“Sure,” Kon says.  “Yeah.”

“Great.” Tim stares up at his ceiling, vignetted in darkness, and takes another bite of his protein bar.  “You have a three day weekend next week.  How about that Friday?”

“Shit,” Kon says.  “I do?”

“Yep,”

“Uh,” Kon says, and Tim can feel hesitation hanging in Kon’s silence.  He’s not sure what to do with it.  Historically, Kon has never been anything besides overeager to hang out.  In fact, this may be the first time in… well, a while, that Tim has been the one to ask Kon to do something.  A part of Tim feels slightly bad about that, but another part of him worries over the fact that he hasn’t even really heard from Kon since he removed his cameras from the farm over a month ago.  Finally, Kon says, “I guess.  Sure.”

“Alright.  So I’ll see you then?” Tim says.

“Yeah.  Bye Tim.”

Tim is about to say goodbye, but Kon has already hung up.  He looks at the screen of his phone, miffed, for several seconds, before he shoves the last piece of protein bar in his mouth and dials Bart.

The phone rings until it reaches Bart’s voicemail, which Tim thinks is ridiculous because a speedster should be able to get to their phone in time to answer it, and he’s about to say just that into Bart’s voicemail when he realizes Bart is suddenly next to him, in his bedroom.  To his credit, Tim does not flinch.  This probably has to do with the quite frankly outrageous number of times Dick has camped out in his apartment, in the dark, for who knows how long, waiting for him to come home, just so he can inform Tim about some trivial piece of information that could have just as easily been delivered via phone call.  Actually, Tim thinks maybe Dick and Bart should hang out sometime.

“Hi, Bart.”

“Hey, Tim.” Bart says.  “Were you calling about Kon?”  He sits down on the edge of Tim’s bed, ankle tucked under one knee to face Tim.

Tim looks at his phone and hangs up. “Uh, yeah.  I just got off the phone with him, he seemed kind of-,”

“He hasn’t shown up at the tower for like four weeks in a row.”

“What?” Tim sits up.  “Has anybody tried to contact him?”

Bart sighs loudly and puts his chin in his hand.  “I went to the farm each week after the first.  Ma says he’s sick.”

“Is he?”

Bart shakes his head.  “I don’t think so.  Kon’s only been sick like a handful of times in his whole life, and all those times were related to specifically extenuating circumstances, or a known plague.”

“Yeah,” Tim says, because he knows Kon’s not sick.  Not physically anyway.

“None of us have been able to contact him at all, Tim.”  Bart says.  “Is he okay?”

“I don’t know.” Tim says.  It’s harder to see in the dark, but Tim can make Bart out clearly enough to at least tell he ran all the way to Gotham in his pajamas.  Actually.  Tim squints.  Wait.  “Are those my pajamas?” he asks.

Bart looks down at himself and says, “Oh, yeah.  Mine burned up on the way over.  I figured you’d be mad if I showed up in your room naked.  So.”

“Oh my God,” Tim says.

“Will you get him to come back to the tower?” Bart asks.  “He’d listen if you asked.”

Tim sighs and rubs his forehead with his thumb and forefinger.  “I don’t know Bart.  He might not.  I don’t know any more than you guys.”

“Yeah but he won’t even take our calls.  You said you just got off the phone with him.”  Bart groans and throws his head back. “I’m telling you, Tim.  If you asked him he’d do it.  He’d do _anything_ if you asked him.”

“I seriously doubt that,” Tim says, and thinks about the many, _many_ times Tim has asked Kon to do things which never got done.  “And anyway, he may have a good reason for keeping his distance.  We don’t know what’s going on, but we know he’s not dead or missing, so we have to trust that there’s a reason for his actions.”

By this point in their friendship Tim has a pretty good sixth sense for when Bart is rolling his eyes or pulling a face at him, and even though Tim can’t see him very clearly in the dark right now, he’s absolutely sure Bart just did one or both of those things.  “Yeah well I don’t care if there’s a reason.  Somethings obviously wrong and what if we could be helping him with it right now but we’re not because he’s keeping us all in the dark!”

“Bart, stop.  You can’t just jump to conclusions like that okay?  Look, I’ll ask him about it, but I can’t promise that I’ll get him to come back.”

For a suspiciously long time Bart is silent.  It’s really only like thirty seconds, but for Bart that’s nearly ten minutes.  Eventually he says, “Yeah, okay.”  And stands up.

“Hey,” Tim says.  “You’re not taking my pajamas with you, are you?”

“Nah,” Bart shakes his head and Tim watches the outline of his hair whip around.  “I’ll leave them here.  Looks like I’ll be running back in my birthday suit.”

Tim puts his head in his hands.

“It’s fine,” Bart says.  “Not like anybody can see me, right?”

When Tim looks up again Bart is gone, and his clothes are in a nice, neatly folded pile at the foot of Tim’s bed.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Tim is doing dishes when Kon shows up that Friday at 5 P.M. on the dot.  It’s hard to tell if he did it on purpose or if the precision of his arrival is just a fluke, but the first thing he says when he floats through Tim’s open window and sees him at the kitchen sink is, “wow, you’re doing _dishes_?”  Tim doesn’t respond so Kon follows up with, “I’m at the right apartment, right?”  He lands on the hardwood with a soft thud, and slowly wanders past the living room toward Tim who still hasn’t turned to face him.  “602 Harrison Street North, Gotham City, Apartment 213?”

Tim rinses the suds off of his favorite Star Labs coffee mug and sets it on the rack to dry.

“You are Tim Drake, right?”

Finally, Tim decides to scoff and reach for the towel on the railing of his dishwasher so that he can fling it at Kon.  The muffled noise of it hitting him in the face is deeply satisfying.  “Make yourself useful,” he says.

“Jeez,” Kon steps up to the counter next to Tim and grabs a plate.  Then he kicks Tim’s dishwasher lightly and says, “What do you have this thing for if you’re not going to use it?”

“Oh, I use it.” Tim says.  “It’s already full.”

Kon makes a noise which is very obviously a poorly concealed laugh.  “If I open your cupboards right now will there be _any_ dishes left?”

“Maybe a bowl and a few butter knives.” Tim hands him a fry pan which Kon inspects briefly before giving it back to him.

“There are still at least 4 spots of burned on food left in this thing.”  Kon says. “God.  If Alfred only knew.”

Tim scowls at him but takes the pan back anyway and begins to scrub it again.  “He probably does.  I don’t like to think about it.”

“Don’t tell me you decided to do all your dishes just for lil’ old me.” Kon says, and grins.

Out of the corner of his eye, Tim inspects Kon’s smile.  He likes to think he can tell when Kon’s feigning happiness, partially because he just knows Kon that well, but mostly because Kon is historically not the best actor.  Tim doesn’t know why he’s surprised that the smile exudes all of Kon’s typical sincerity, but he is.

“No,” Tim says, and smirks back at him.  “I also vacuumed at least a family sized box worth of granola bar crumbs out of the couch cushions.”

“Whoa,” Kon laughs.  “That’s impressive.”

“I do what I can,” Tim says.

“Man,” Kon sighs and gazes up at Tim’s ceiling while he wipes off the now squeaky clean fry pan that Tim just handed to him.  “Back in the day, I never would have pegged you for such a slob.”

“Yeah, well your bedroom is disturbingly organized for someone who used to spend all their free time pigging out on the couch watching Wendy the Werewolf Stalker.”

“Hey, I still do that,” Kon says, pointing Tim’s own fry pan at him.  “And in my defense, it’s mostly Ma’s fault.  I had to get really good at using my TTK to pick crap up seconds before she barged into my room.  It just turned into a habit.”

“I’m sure,” Tim says and drops a handful of silverware into the drying rack which he mostly washed.

Kon eyes a few of the forks but doesn’t say anything about Tim’s poor cleaning skills.  “So I was kind of out of it on the phone, what am I doing here again besides checking out your weirdly normal, non-extravagant apartment?”

“It’s not as normal as it looks, I promise.” Tim says.  “Bruce is back in town for a few weeks so-,”

“Are you coming back to the Titans?” Kon asks.

Tim barely curbs the knee-jerk reaction to tell Kon he could ask him the same thing and says instead, “As long as Bruce is in town, yeah.  Once he leaves I’ll need to stay in Gotham on the weekends to help out again.”

Kon groans loudly.

“Tonight though, we’re going after Jason.”

“We’re going _after_ him?” Kon asks, and sets down the last blessedly dry spoon.

“Well,” Tim shoos Kon away from the dishwasher so he can start it and Kon turns to begin rooting through his cupboards, presumably so he can put things away.  “We’re going to scare him off, at least.”

“From Stephanie?” Kon asks, and touches the counter.  All of Tim’s dishes begin to float into his open cabinets.  It’s all very Harry Potter-esque.  Tim makes a mental note to invite Kon over more often.  “What if she actually likes him, though?”

“Kon,” Tim grabs what’s left of his silverware from the drying rack and walks past Kon to put it away.  “Jason tried to kill me once wearing a robin costume that was two sizes too small for him and banana pants.  Stephanie only think’s she likes him, and she’s wrong.”

The look Kon gives him is one Tim normally receives upon saying something allegedly insensitive.  He’s gotten it from a myriad of different individuals on a myriad of occasions, but mostly, he gets it from Kon.

“I know what you’re thinking,” Tim says.  “And you’re wrong too.”

“I’m not saying the guys not a jerk, dude.” Kon says.  “I’m just saying… I don’t know, people change.”

“They don’t change _that_ much.”  Tim hangs the rag that Kon left crumpled and wet on the counter over the edge of his sink.  “I’m going to get dressed, we’re leaving in ten.”  He turns, brushes past Kon and heads towards the hallway, trying to ignore Kon muttering behind him.

“Nice to see you Kon, how are you doing?  I’m doing great, Tim, thanks for asking.  Ready for a normal evening in with your best friend?  Sure am, gee, it’s so nice to be a regular, normal guy with no stalker tendencies or disturbing overprotective issues concerning his ex-girlfriend.  Yeah Tim, it sure is.”

“Just because you have super-hearing doesn’t mean everybody else in the world is deaf, Kon.”  Tim calls from his bedroom.

“Nobody asked you, Tim!” Kon yells back.

Tim lets himself smile, but only because Kon isn’t in the room to see it.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Gotham is getting progressively colder as the nights go on.  During the day it’s not always so bad, but after dark when Tim has nothing but the fairly thin fibers of his suit to protect him, it can get to be a little chilly.  Still, the temperature’s not quite low enough to warrant switching over to winter gear, so Tim has to suck it up and let the icy winds hit is cheeks like pins and needles as he flies through the streets on his R-Cycle, Kon soaring just above him, matching his speed.

“So remind me again how you found out where Jason’s safe house is?” Kon asks, voice warped slightly by the crackle of the comm.

“Stephanie’s been getting texts from a Mr. Todd Jonas.  It’s obviously Jason.  He sent her an address to meet him for, allegedly, a _study group_.  The address belongs to a previously abandoned warehouse on Sandy Hook Island.  It may not be his permanent residence, but I’m hoping if we don’t find Jason, we’ll at least find _something_ there.”

“Right, but not even Red Hood would be stupid enough to just send his address to somebody in _your_ family via, _text message_.”

“Agreed.”  Tim says and turns a sharp corner.

Kon nearly flies into a building trying to follow him.  “Jeez, warn a guy next time.”

“Sorry,” Tim says, and knows he probably doesn’t sound sorry.  He _is_ a little bit sorry.  “The warehouse is very likely littered with booby traps.  _You_ probably don’t have anything to worry about, but be careful anyway.  If you trigger one it could still kill _me_.”

“I _know_ that.” Kon says sounding distinctly annoyed.

A few blocks away from their destination, Tim signals for Kon to stop and he parks the R-Cycle next to a dumpster in a particularly shady looking back alley.  “It should be 3 blocks north of here,” Tim says as Kon lands almost silently next to him.  He’s gotten much better at the whole stealth thing since Tim’s known him, although he’s never been able to sneak up on _Tim_.

“You want a lift, or are we going to have to hoof it?”

Tim takes a moment to weigh the pros and cons of a ground assault versus an aerial one.  Finally he says, “Give me a lift, and make sure you go high, I don’t want any sensors or cameras to see us coming.”   He barely finishes his sentence before Kon scoops him up from behind, under his arms and begins ascending.  “Could you have picked maybe a better way to do this?” Tim asks, feeling sort of like a cat being carried by a very inept child.

“Look, dragging you around by your wrists all the time can’t be good for your arms, and I _know_ it’s not good for my back.  You’re disarmingly heavy.”

“Sure I am, _Super_ boy.”

“Look, it’s this or bridal style.  Take your pick.”

“I would take literally anything over _this_.” Tim says.  He flaps his arms around uselessly to emphasize his displeasure.

“You asked for it,” Kon says, and heaves him upwards.  Tim catches on quickly enough to bring his knees up for Kon to slip his arm under before anybody falls to their deaths as they rise above the roof of the alley’s buildings.  “Happy now?”

Tim is in fact _very_ happy, but instead he says, “Not particularly.”

Kon snorts.  “Whatever you say _Batman_.”

“If Batman let Superman carry him like this I think I’d have a heart attack.” Tim says. 

He can actually _feel_ Kon shuddering when he says, “Oh God, ditto.”

By the time they actually reach the warehouse and Kon lands mostly silently on the roof, Tim thinks he regrets letting himself be carried across the proverbial threshold by Kon.  Mostly because it’s pretty easy to forget that he used to be more or less borderline in love with Kon when all he has to put up with is looking at his ugly (handsome) mug all day long, but it’s slightly harder when he can feel Kon’s arms cradling him and warmth radiating off of Kon’s body like a furnace.  So if he more or less kicks his way gracelessly out of Kon’s grip as soon as they touch down to escape whatever weird feeling may or may not be crawling up his throat, so be it.

“Yikes,” Kon says, trying to put him down gently and mostly failing.

He takes a moment to survey the roof for booby-traps before saying, “Can you do a scan of the interior?  What kind of floorplan are we dealing with, and what are my points of entry?”

After a few moments of severe staring Kon says, “Looks pretty basic, vents running across the ceiling in multiple directions.  I see a kitchen, living room, bedroom, and work out area all in a grid running north to south.  Pretty open floor plan.  Nice place.  He’s got his washer and dryer on the ground level next to his _bike_?  That does not look cool.”

“ _Kon_.” Tim says, and Kon sighs.

“Yeah.  He’s in there I think.  Unless it’s someone else.  Looks like he’s just sitting on the couch.  One of the vents has an exhaust panel that should open right behind him.  Otherwise the place is crawling with windows.  Those are probably locked at best, booby trapped at worst, though.”

“Knowing Jason, _everything’s_ probably booby trapped.”

“So… the vents?” Kon says.

“For me, yeah.  You’ll have to take your chances with the window, though.  These shafts look pretty small,” Tim says, inspecting the grating on the roof’s air duct.  “I don’t think you’ll fit.”

“Great.” Kon says.

“You’ll be fine,” Tim says.  “Jason’s traps are probably only rigged to kill normal humans.  I highly doubt he’s expecting a Super to break into his safe house.”

“ _Probably_.” Kon says mockingly.  He takes off and disappears over the edge of the building anyway. 

The shafts, as it turns out, are almost too small for _Tim_.  Bruce or Dick would certainly never be able to fit.  The problem with being too big for a small space, besides the obvious, is that it’s a lot harder to move around without making noise.  By the time he reaches the opening Kon had mentioned, Tim is almost positive Jason has heard him knocking around up in his ceiling, but he can see the Back of Jason’s head through the slits in the grate and he seems to be in the same position Kon had described earlier, sitting on the couch watching… X-Files?

Across the room Tim can just barely make out Kon’s shadow silhouetted against the window pane.  He loosens a throwing disk from his belt and positions himself to kick the grate open.  He counts to three and then thrusts forward, bursting out of the vent and chucking his throwing disk at the same time.

“Whatthefuck!” Jason jumps nearly a foot in air when Tim’s disk hits his TV, cracking the screen.  X-files is still playing despite the damage which Tim finds to be kind of rude on the TV’s part, not to mention distracting.

Kon accurately takes this as his cue to bust through the window.  Well, he doesn’t really bust so much as fly calmly through it like some kind of terminator, glass shattering around him.

“Holyshit!” Jason says.  He moves for the Beretta laying on his coffee table, but Kon is already in the living room, leaning one hand on the arm of the couch.  Jason is slammed back against the cushions.

“Not so fast, number two.” Kon says, smirking, and Tim takes a moment to appreciate Kon’s smarmy interrogation expression before appearing on the other end of the couch.

Jason gives Kon a look and says, “Number two?”

The smarmy expression falls briefly and Kon says, “Y’know, b-because you’re the second Robin.”

“Why don’t you leave the nicknames to me, Superbaby.”

“Why don’t you leave the intimidating to _us_ , Jason,” Tim counters.

Jason’s head whips around to face Tim, and Tim notices for the first time the bowl of M&M’s in his lap.  “Oh, I’m sorry, is this supposed to be intimidating?”  He laughs.  “So I can’t move my whole body and you and your superboyfriend busted my TV and my window.  Not like you’re going to kill me.  Do what you want.  Sit down, grab a Zesti from the fridge, watch an X-File or two.  Next ep’s the one where Mulder and Scully get fake-married.  It’s a good one.”

“You have no idea what I’m going to do, Jason.” Tim says.

“Look kid,” Jason smiles pleasantly and it’s incredibly disturbing.  “I’ve _been_ dead before.  It ain’t so bad.  It’s the coming back part that really sucks.  So like I said: do what you want.”

Tim opens his mouth to respond but Kon beats him to it.  “We’ll have to agree to disagree about that.” He says.

Jason and Tim both look at him for a moment until Jason hums and Tim tries to swallow the sick feeling that clings to the back of his tongue.

“What do you guys even _want_?” Jason finally asks, this time turning to Tim.

“Stay away from Stephanie,” Tim says.

“Why?” Jason asks.  “Because I’m a bad influence?  News flash, kid:  Her father’s a world renown criminal.  If she survived him and still turned out okay, I think she can stand to hang out with me once or twice.”

Something occurs to Tim.  “She likes you, Jason.”

“Yeah I know, she’s a cool kid.”

“Jason,” Tim says.  “She _likes_ you.”

Jason squints and then suddenly his eyes widen.  “Oh shit.”

“Yeah.  Stay away from her.”

A loud groan spills from Jason’s mouth and his head lolls back against the couch cushions.  “ _Shit_.”

Tim notices Kon eyeing Jason with what Tim would almost classify as a look of sympathy.  “So we have an agreement?”

“Yeah,” Jason sighs.  “Yeah, I’ll keep my distance for a while.”

“Not for a while,” Tim says.  “For good.”

Jason scowls at him but concedes anyway.  “Fine, whatever.  Look Timbo, don’t shit your pants alright?  Your girl’ll come around sooner than you think.”

“Yeah well she seemed pretty smitten to me.” Tim says.

“As flattering as that is:  Trust me.  It won’t take long for her to figure out I’m no good for her.”  Jason says and then makes what Tim assumes is supposed to be some sort of gesture by bobbing his head.  “Now will you two assholes please get out of my house?  You’ve ruined my TV, and unlike some people, I don’t have a billion dollar company funding my war on crime to buy me a new one, so I’ll be watching X-Files through a bleeding cracked screen for the next three months thanks to you and your fucking theatrics.”

“I’ll be keeping an eye on you,” Tim says, and Jason smiles at him with disgusting smugness.

“You’re welcome to try.”

Kon releases Jason from the hold of his TTK and is moving towards the window he had come in through when Jason calls after them, “Use the front door, jerk wads!”

Awkwardly and with more than a little shuffling, Tim and Kon turn around head towards the stairs.  They remain silent as they walk past Jason’s quite frankly gargantuan pile of laundry, and his bike.  Kon lifts the garage door for Tim to slip under and follows him out.  As he’s setting it gently back down he says, “There were literally no booby traps in that entire place.”

“I know,” Tim says.  “I can’t even think about that right now.”

÷÷÷÷÷÷

 “What now?  We hit up Crime Alley?” Kon asks, floating idly next to Tim as he mounts the R-Cycle.

“Well,” Tim says, “I didn’t exactly account for the possibility that Jason would be in the first safe house we hit, much less that he’d just… agree to our terms and conditions without any resistance.”

“So?”

“So I imagined this night going very differently and with a considerably higher number of rooftop chase scenes and shoulder wounds, and I kind of pawned off my patrol route on Black Bat.”

Kon groans loudly.  “Are you kidding me?  This is _Gotham_ , there’s gotta be some crime around here to bust!”

Tim narrows his eyes at Kon.  “Contrary to popular belief, Gotham isn’t a total hotbed of criminal activity _all_ the time.”  He slips his helmet on.  “There are a few ongoing cases that _I_ could be working on, but I don’t think Batman would appreciate my involving you in them.”

“Well _that’s_ rude.” Kon says.

“It’s not personal.”  Tim revs the cycle.  “We can run a few routes if you want, but don’t expect to find much of anything.  Things have been pretty quiet since you-know-who has been back in town.”

“I’ll take what I can get.” Kon says, and Tim zips out of the alley and onto the main road with Kon following close behind.

They do catch a few punk kids trying sell weed on a street corner but Tim only stops long enough to make sure they’re over eighteen.  Considering Tim Wayne’s official stance on the legalization of Marijuana is a fairly positive one, it would feel wrong to bust them for selling it, even if it is _technically_ illegal.  Kon laughs about the confrontation for an entire city block afterword’s and then tells Tim he should have bought some to which Tim replies that he won’t turn eighteen for another three months.

Two hours later after they’ve circled their route three times, Tim calls it and they head back to his apartment.

“You want to see the basement?” Tim asks as they head towards the apartment building.

Kon’s emphatic, “ _Hell_ yeah!” makes his opinion pretty clear and Tim veers around to the west side of the building where the closed off garage access is.  Kon follows him through the abandoned interior of the garage and Tim weaves back and forth between the support pillars leading to the service elevator, partially for the hell of it and partially to see if Kon will follow his lead and weave behind him. He smiles, face hidden beneath the tint of his visor, when he sees Kon flying straight beside him, pouting.

“Show off,” Kon says when Tim screeches to a halt inside the elevator. 

After Kon touches down on the metal plated floor next to him, Tim takes off his helmet and flips a switch labeled _Emergency Break_.  “I’m sorry,” Tim says as the elevator begins to descend.  “How long has it been since you mentioned your Tactile Telekinesis?  One day?  God, has it been two?”

Kon crosses his arms.  “You’re hilarious.”

Tim smiles at him.

The service elevator comes to a jerking stop at the bottom floor of Tim’s basement and the doors open up on a short hallway that leads to Tim’s _actual_ garage for his actual vehicles.  “It’s not quite as big as the Batcave,” He says and parks the R-Cycle next to his Redbird.  “But it doesn’t really need to be for my purposes.”

“Holy shit,” Kon has flown several meters into the air above Tim and is turning slowly, taking in all of Tim’s various toys.  “Is that a crime lab?”

“Yeah,” Tim says and turns to his computer which he notes with rising terror is still streaming the live feed of his various surveillance cameras with the center monitor conveniently empty where Kon’s room would be.

“Nice,” Kon says, and lands beside Tim.  “You think your computer screen could be bigger?”  He asks.  “I don’t think it’s big enough.” 

Tim’s monitor is only slightly smaller than an average movie theater screen and he knows, logically, that Kon is being sarcastic but something is preventing him from responding correctly so instead of trying to reply he just says, “Um, do you want to order in?”

Kon gives him a weird look but it settles pretty quickly.  “Sure.  Any good pizza places that deliver at 2 A.M. in Gotham?”

“Only about a hundred.  Some of the actually specifically market themselves toward vigilantes, if you can believe it.”

“I can,” Kon says, “and it’s awesome.”

One short huff later Tim approaches his computer and puts it back into desktop mode.  He pulls up an Excel document and says, “Here’s a list of all the best twenty-four hour delivery places within range of my apartment, ranked in order of my own favoritism.  They’re not all pizza places, but you can take your pick and order whatever.”

Kon laughs loudly and says, “This is the first good thing you’ve ever done with your list making neurosis.”

“I’m going to take a shower,” Tim says and starts towards his one man locker room.  “Elevator back to the apartment is just to your right.  Try and make sure you’re not wearing your Superboy shirt when the deliver guy shows up?”

“Ha, Ha, Ha,” Kon’s fake laugh echoes through the basement as Tim rounds the corner of his locker room wall.

As a general rule, Tim tries not to make a habit out of wearing his uniform inside his actual apartment.  He visited Dick plenty of times when he used to live in Bludhaven and didn’t exactly idolize the discarded Nightwing costume hanging over the back of his couch or the dismantled Wingdings scattered across his kitchen counter.  That sort of lifestyle worked fine for Dick, but Tim needed to keep his personal identity, public identity, and vigilante identity as separate as possible because unlike some people, he did not thrive on chaos.  Which, Tim thinks, smirking as he turns the hot water on almost as high as it will go, is pretty ironic considering his life contains infinitely more chaos than that of the average seventeen year old.

He doesn’t take very long in the shower, just long enough to wash off the grime of the city and the various travesties of cowl hair.  Mostly, Tim doesn’t want to leave Kon alone in his apartment for too long on the off chance that he either A. manages to somehow destroy it, or B. finds some kind of incriminating evidence to use against Tim for black mailing purposes.  As if he doesn’t already have enough of that.

It’s only been about twenty minutes by the time he’s dressed and in the elevator, ascending to the main floor of his apartment, and Tim is pretty sure that not even Kon can do _that_ much damage in such a short amount of time.

As it turns out, when Tim walks into the open space of his apartment, he’s only _partially_ right.  Kon is sitting, hunched over his kitchen counter, but straightens up instantly when Tim enters the room.  He doesn’t think much of it until he walks around the island to see that Kon’s eyes are closed and his lips are pressed tightly together.

“Kon?” Tim says.

“Yep,” Kon answers.

“Um,” Tim studies Kon’s frame, stooped shoulders, clasped hands shaking very slightly.  “Did… um, did you order food?”

After several long moments, Kon’s face turns towards his clenched hands, and he seems to squint down at them before letting out a very long breath and laughing sort of hysterically.  “I don’t know.  Maybe?  I think so.”

Tim catches himself just barely before he asks if Kon’s okay and says instead, “What happened?”  He moves to sit down on the stool next to Kon’s.

“You should probably apologize to the lady I talked to on the phone…” Kon says.

“What did you say?”

Kon laughs again and says, “Nothing, mostly.  I think I hyperventilated for like four minutes and then screamed your address and my order and hung up.  It’s fine.”

Tim stares at Kon who stares at his hands and says, “Kon… what _happened_ though?”

Kon purses his lips and shrugs.  “I don’t know.  We don’t have to talk about it.  You might want to call that place though and make sure our food is coming.  I would but…”

He looks at Kon’s profile for several more seconds before reaching for the handset phone that’s still sitting abandoned on Tim’s granite countertop and hitting redial.  As it turns out, Kon was trying to order Korean.  He talks to Kimberly (who knows him by name) and asks her if his order is actually on the way, which it is, and then tells her his friend is fine when she asks about Kon.  By the time he hangs up, Kon’s head is on the countertop and he’s groaning loudly and running his hands through his hair sort of frantically.

“Stop,” Tim grabs his wrist and even though he knows he could do nothing to stop Kon from rubbing all the hair off his head if he really wanted to, Kon _does_ stop.  “Its fine, Kon.”

At this, Kon raises his head slightly to give Tim a skeptical look.

“I mean,” Tim says, “It’s probably not _fine_ , but…” he sighs, “look what I’m trying to say is everybody has stuff that gets to them.  I know I’ve had more panic attacks than I can probably count.”

“Yeah but I bet yours don’t come with a deadly laser light show.”’

Tim makes a show of looking around his apartment before saying, “I don’t see any holes or scorch marks.”

“Yeah well,” Kon says.  “You’re lucky.  You saw what I did to the wall in my bedroom.”

“Is this why you’ve been skipping out on weekends at the Tower?”

Kon narrows his eyes and says, “Who told you?”

“Nobody.  I may not have any cameras left at the farm but I still have access to the Tower’s surveillance.”

“Right…” Kon sighs.  “I just… I don’t want to hurt anybody by accident.  Sometimes it’s just like… the most random crap sets me off.  It’s not like I can just… I don’t know, _avoid_ the color blue or something and be alright.  One time I literally saw grass and I lost it so bad I blew up a whole bale of hay.  Fucking _grass_ , dude!”

Tim looks at Kon.  Watches the profile of his face in the muted light of his hanging kitchen lamp and the way his fingers are weaved together, clenching periodically.  It’s not fair that something is upsetting Kon _this_ badly, giving him panic attacks, _triggering_ him, and Tim doesn’t even know what it is, wouldn’t even necessarily be able to help if he _did_.  There have been quite a few times in Tim’s life when he’s felt totally, completely helpless.  He doesn’t like to dwell on them, and most days he works pretty hard to pretend they never happened, but _this_ has got to be the absolute worst because this helplessness isn’t just Tim’s, it extends all the way to Kon, someone who Tim never thought he’d have to feel helpless for.

“Um,” Kon says, and he’s looking at Tim a little nervously.  “Sorry… I didn’t meant to like… unload on you.”

“Kon,” Tim says and Kon looks up in that way he used to when he was younger and he knew he’d done something wrong.  Tim always equated it to the guilty face puppies make after they pee on something you love and he used to _hate_ that expression.  Now it kind of almost makes him want to cry. “I know…” Tim takes a breath, tries to prepare himself mentally for the exhaustion that always comes after emotional sincerity.  “I know that whatever’s going on with you right now, you want to keep it a secret, and that’s fine.  I completely respect your decision to do that.  But… I want to also make clear that if you ever… change your mind about that?  I’m going to be here for you.  If you want to talk to me about stuff – _anything_ , literally, anything – you can.  Okay?”

It feels like hours that Kon just looks at him, but Tim knows it’s more like a minute tops.  Finally, Kon opens his mouth at the exact moment that the doorbell goes off and Kon jumps nearly a foot in the air and then doesn’t come back down.

“Uh,” Tim says.  “I should get that.  You might want to…” He makes a gesture with his hand and Kon suddenly nods and descends back into his seat.

Tim probably could have just buzzed the delivery girl up instead of going all the way down to the first floor, but he’s kind of glad he decided not to because she looks tired and he’s not entirely sure Kon should be around regular people right now.  He takes the bags from her hands and tips her generously because even though the restaurant is barely a block down the street she _was_ exceptionally fast.  Plus Tim just likes over tipping.

By the time he gets back upstairs Kon has moved from the kitchen counter to Tim’s sectional _and_ he has apparently found the AMC channel on Tim’s TV which is currently playing the second Terminator movie.  This more than likely means that any headway Tim had gained towards getting Kon to confess his problems has been completely lost, so Tim sets the takeout down on his coffee table and sits down next to Kon.

“Thanks man,” Kon says, and takes the pair of chopsticks that Tim hands him. “Also thanks for paying,” he grins sheepishly.

“You’re welcome,” Tim says.  “After all it’s not like I’m the adopted son of a multi-billionaire, or the vice-president of his multi-billion dollar company.  I’m barely scraping by, you should be ashamed, really.”

Kon laughs and says, “God you’re a dick.”

After that they eat and watch the movie in relative silence which Tim is and isn’t grateful for.  Whenever they used to watch movies together back at the cave when it was just him, Kon, and Bart, Tim used to only let them watch movie’s he’d already seen otherwise he wouldn’t be able to understand even half of the plot much less what any of the characters were actually saying, hindered as he was by Bart and Kon making wisecracks every other minute, laughing uproariously, or straight up just yelling.

Watching movies one on one with Kon is a lot less stressful than it tends to be in group situations, but for Kon to be completely silent for a movie’s entire duration is still unusual.  By the time the credits roll and AMC announces the next movie to be some nameless Adam Sandler romcom Kon is covering his eyes and hissing for Tim to change the channel.

Per request, Tim reaches for his laptop on the coffee table and pulls up his movie database which is as large and vast as the sun is hot and bright.  He settles on the second Alien movie because if there’s one thing Tim knows about Kon it’s that he likes retro science fiction and mindless gimmicky action movies.  Aliens fits both categories and is the natural choice.  Tim is rewarded for his brilliance when Kon sinks into the couch and says, “Oh thank God,” and then, “How’d you get that from your laptop to your TV?” When Tim opens his mouth to respond Kon says, “Wait, wait, no, don’t tell me.    Blue Tooth?  It’s Blue Tooth right?”

Tim snorts.  “No.  Cordless HDMI.  It’s not on the market yet but give it a year and it’ll be installed in all of Wayne Tech’s commercial and consumer devices.”

“Let me guess,” Kon says.  “Your idea?”

Against his better judgment, Tim smiles.  “I’ve been pushing for it, yeah.  But if you can believe it, it’s Damian who gave me the original idea.”

“You are shitting me.”

“Yeah he’d been sprayed by some of Ivy’s pollen – it was harmless thank God, but it turned him orange and I told him he looked like an Oompa Loompa, so he said,” Tim clears his throat and prepares to imitate Damian’s obnoxious tone of voice, “Drake if you weren’t already drowning in medical tubes, I’d drown you myself.”

“Jesus,” Kon says.

“And then I thought: Cords get in the way of literally everything and they are really ugly.”  Tim mimics an explosion with his hands.  “Divine inspiration at the hands of my homicidal step-brother.”

Kon stares at him for a moment and then says, “Dude… that’s like… that’s…. you sound like you were totally high.   That’s literally the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard you say.”

“I _was_ high.” Tim says.  “I was _extremely_ high.  Alfred had me on so many pain meds I don’t think I actually even remember them all.  I may have glossed over the part where I had 3 broken ribs, a dislocated shoulder, and a fractured knee-cap.”

“ _Jesus_.” Kon says.  “How long ago was that?”

“Six or seven months.  You want a Zesti?”

Kon eyes him for a moment. “ _Hell_ yeah.”

After Tim gets them both a Zesti they continue watching in relative silence.  If either of them were smart or _normal_ , Tim thinks maybe they’d call it quits and just go to bed.  It’s verging on four in the morning at this point and despite the fact that Tim has nowhere to be tomorrow morning and it _was_ an early night, he doesn’t exactly like to make a habit out of staying up all night when he’s not on patrol.  But the air in the room feels charged like static in a cold, dry winter, and Tim’s just waiting for someone to touch something and spark it.

Tim’s honestly expecting it to be something he says, or maybe even something in the movie, but then right as Ripley’s team is landing on Hadley’s Hope Kon says, “I think it’s because the grass was green.”

“What?” Tim says and turns to look at him.

Kon ducks his head.  “When I said I freaked out that one time because I saw grass?  I think it was the color of the grass.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” Kon says. “It was um… the same color as her stupid mask.  Knockout’s.”

Tim blinks and pulls himself out of his slouch.  “This is about Knockout coming back?”

“Not… not really.” Kon says and then, “Well… kind of.  I guess.”  He sighs.  Tim watches his adam’s apple bob as he swallows.

“You don’t _have_ to tell me, Kon.” He decides he should throw that out there, even though he _really_ wants to know.

“Well,” Kon huffs.  “I’m kind of supposed to? I mean… not necessarily right _now_ but.  It’s… I don’t know.  I thought about who I’d tell if I had to and I guess I’d tell Cassie if we weren’t, you know, fighting or whatever right now, but… even if we _weren’t_ I kind of still think I’d tell you first so.”

Tim tries to smile at this but he’s not sure if the expression makes it all the way out of his brain and onto his face.  “Still, you don’t have to.”

Kon makes a face at him.  “Just promise you won’t get weird about it.”

“I’m not weird about anything.”

Kon makes a sound that is almost a laugh and says, “You’re weird about _everything_ dude.”

“I don’t see how there can be a problem then since you’re friends with me anyway.”

After a quite frankly rude looking sideways glance, Kon sighs and waits a beat before saying, “I told you about that time with the cop right?”

“Yeah when you thought she was innocent?”

“But she’d been lying to me the whole time.”

“Yeah,” Tim says.  “You told me.”

“Well,” Kon says, fiddling with the tab on his can of Zesti.  “We also had sex.”

“ _What_.” Tim says.

“Like… a couple times.”

Tim opens his mouth but doesn’t actually speak.  A part of him is not exactly surprised considering how promiscuous Kon used to be back then, but a much larger part of him feels like this may be more an explanation for that than it is a byproduct.

“It was actually the first time I, um… Anyway I don’t think I actually wanted to.”

“Oh,” Tim says and feels sort of like he may be sinking bodily into the couch or is otherwise being somehow consumed by a non-corporeal entity.

“I mean,” Kon says, “I _wanted_ to, or like, I thought I did.  I guess.  I thought I was _supposed_ to want to.”  He takes a deep breath.  “I actually lied to Tana about it being my first time when I was with her.  I just didn’t… I don’t know, I didn’t think it counted or something I guess.”

“It _doesn’t_ count.” Tim says because it doesn’t.

“Well,” Kon says.  “I didn’t realize how messed up it was until like way after.  And by way after I mean two months ago.”  He sighs.  “I don’t even know why I let it happen.  The more I think about it the more I _know_ I didn’t want to do it so-,”

“Kon she manipulated you.  Even before you told me this, it was obvious she was manipulating you.” Tim says.  “You can’t blame yourself for that.”

“For the cop thing, yeah, sure.  But I didn’t have to let her have _sex_ with me.  I mean what the fuck was I honestly thinking?  Oh I’ll just let it happen even though I really don’t want to have sex with this person who is like my weird hot mom?  There’s no universe where that makes sense.”

“Kon, that’s called being raped.” Tim says and he feels like his internal organs are boiling. Kon visibly flinches.  “I- sorry.”

Kon sets his Zesti down on Tim’s coffee table rather forcefully and puts his head in his hands.  “You sound like my fucking therapist.”  He’s pressing the heels of his palms into his eyes which Tim has seen him do maybe two times ever and he _really_ wants to reach over and touch Kon somehow.  Put a hand on his back or squeeze his shoulder or _something_ but he’s sitting too far away and any excess physical movement feels somehow impossible right now.

He settles for saying, “Thank you for telling me.”

“Yeah,” Kon says.  “Thanks for not being weird... er than usual.”

There are a thousand questions Tim wants ask:  Is Kon going to quit the Titans for the foreseeable future?  If so, does he plan to come back?  Is this the only reason he broke up with Cassie?  How has Clark been handling this, has he been supportive enough?  Does Bruce know (because this is always a question worth asking regardless of the subject matter)?  How much does Kon want him to reveal if someone (Stephanie) asks him flat out?  Nothing?  Some of it?  All of it?  Does he like his therapist?  Do they know he’s Superboy?  Because that’s important.  Is it covered by Clark’s insurance or are they paying out of pocket?  If so does Clark need help paying for it?  If the therapist is covered by insurance what are their credentials?  Are they licensed to treat superheroes?  A licensed superhero therapist who specializes in sexual trauma recovery and PTSD could be hard to come by.  If Kon’s therapist isn’t qualified does he need help finding and/or paying for one that is?

“Um,” Kon says and Tim snaps to attention, notices that Kon has sat up and looks more or less put together again. “Do you want me to go?”

“What?  No!”

“Because you’ve got that look on your face that you get at the beginning of a chess game with Alfred where you’re trying to predict all of his moves for the whole game before he makes them, and if this is freaking you out I can… I mean, I don’t have to stick around.”  Kon says. “Its fine, I won’t be mad.  I get it.”

“ _No_.” Tim says and when Kon looks at him bemusedly he adds, “I’m just… Kon you’re my best friend, I mean, you know that.  I’m not _freaking out_ , but I’m definitely worried about you.  That’s all.”

Kon doesn’t look entirely satisfied with this answer and says, “So you want to give me the standard third degree but you don’t want to say something stupid and mess me up.”

“Yeah,” Tim hangs his head.

“Well go for it, if I don’t want to answer I just won’t, deal?”

Tim immediately straightens up, turns to face Kon on the couch and asks the first question that comes to mind, “How qualified is your therapist.”

Kon almost smiles. “Qualified.”

“How are you paying for it?  I mean I know-,”

“Lois is paying, and before you ask, she’s a multi-Pulitzer Prize winner, she’s good for it dude.  Also please don’t send her any weird bat-themed thank you cards or offer to pay instead.  She wanted to do it and I’ve already thanked her like ten-thousand times myself.”

“Can I send her a Tim Drake themed thank you card?” Tim asks and can’t stop himself from smiling when Kon laughs.

“You can.  It would be weird.  She’d put it on her fridge and we’d make fun of it together every time I visited, but you can.”

Tim nods and seriously considers sending the thank you note despite Kon’s threats for at least 3 full seconds before he decides the implication of Tim Wayne sending a thank-you-for-paying-for-Conner’s-therapy note to a family of individuals he publicly barely knows is probably more stupid than it is heartfelt.  He sighs and then says, “Okay.  Um, so… if somebody asks should I-,”

“Please don’t tell anybody,” The smile on Kon’s face disappears and Tim feels like he’s staring straight through Tim’s brain and into the heart of his very self.  “You can’t tell anyone okay.”

“I won’t, Kon.” Tim says.  “I would never.  But if somebody _asks_ , do you have like a cover story you’ve been using, or?”

“Um,” Kon looks down at his lap, fiddles with his thumb a bit.  “Not really.  I’ve just been really vague.  I’ve proven to be kind of a shit liar about this so.”

“Okay. Last question,” Tim says because he has more but he’s almost positive they don’t _need_ to be asked and Kon is starting to look seriously world weary. “I’m assuming Martha and Clark already know?”

Kon’s head bobs up and down.

“Is it… is it just me and them then?” Tim asks and feels like he might cave in on himself like an exploding supernova if Tim is literally the first person Kon has told besides his immediate family.

“Well, Lois too, obviously, and also I’m pretty sure Nightwing knows?”

“You told Dick?” Tim says and feels a multitude of conflicting and mixed emotions.

“No, I mean.  I didn’t tell him.  I’m pretty sure Clark did though.  After Bart showed up at the farm for the fourth time Clark said I should probably say something to the Titans, but I wasn’t ready to tell _you_ yet, much less _them_ , so… Clark told Dick and Dick I think just made up some crap about why I wasn’t going to be around for a while.”

It probably says something about Tim that his first thought upon hearing this is betrayal that Dick hadn’t sought _him_ out to make up a crap story about why Kon wasn’t at Titan’s tower.  Of course if Dick had done that, Tim would have known immediately that he was lying which is probably exactly the reason Dick _didn’t_ do that.  Tim frowns.

“So, besides Dick who had to find out through necessity, it’s just… me, Martha, Clark and Lois?”

“Yeah,” Kon shrugs.  “Pretty much.”

After taking an extremely deep breath Tim says, “Okay.”  He looks at Kon.  “I definitely have more questions, but I think they can wait for a while.”

Kon makes a windy, exasperated noise and says, “Thank God,” Then sinks back into the cushions of the couch and turns to the TV.  After a moment he laughs quietly and says, “This is the best part.”

On the television, Ripley is yelling and spraying fire all over the screen with a flamethrower.  “Every part of this movie is the best part,” Tim says.

“Damn right.” Kon says and reaches for his Zesti.


	3. November

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I almost forgot to post this today and am ashamed. Anyway, the next chapter is a shorter one but I'm sticking to my once weekly update schedule just because it will be the last chapter before I need to start doing heavy editing. Most of the ones I've posted so far have already been read over a couple times and there are one or two scenes I still need to add into the following chapters.
> 
> But for now, please enjoy Tim Drake: Human Disaster.

 

At seven o’clock in the morning, Tim’s phone buzzes its way across his nightstand.  Having only gone to bed at four A.M. the night prior, Tim feels it is within his right to ignore it, so he rolls over and waits for his phone to stop vibrating.  For about a minute he lays in peace until, as he is about to doze off, it starts up again.

With a significant groan Tim rolls back over and reaches his phone just barely before it shuffles over the edge of his dresser.  He swipes his thumb across the screen and puts it to his ear without looking at the caller.  “What?” he says and doesn’t feel bad for sounding annoyed because he’s running on three hours of sleep and the day before he had been running on even less – and really, accumulatively, he’s spent this entire week surviving on barely eighteen hours total so Tim’s entitled to a little bit of spite at this point.

The only thing audible on the other line is stuttered, heavy breathing. Tim pulls the phone away from his ear to look at the caller and feels any lingering lethargy drain straight out of him when he sees Kon’s name and an old picture of him back from when they were in Young Justice.

“Kon?” Tim says and hears Kon make an audible, shaky noise of confirmation on the other line. “Hey, it’s okay.  Try to slow your breathing, alright?  What happened, what’s going on around you right now, can you tell me?”

Kon takes a deep ragged breath and says all in a rush, “I-know-what’s-fucking-going-on,” another deep breath, “I’m-having-a-panic-attack” After a slightly shorter, third breath, Kon adds, “you-dick.”

“I kind of put that together,” Tim says.

“Worlds-greatest-detective,” Kon pants. “Ma’s… not home, so-,” another breath, “Sorry I-,”

“It’s fine,” Tim says. Kon’s breathing is slowing measurably.  “It was just a late night for me.”

“I can call back,” Kon says, and sounds only a little winded now, although his voice is still shaking and Tim kind of wants to sink into his bed until he’s been consumed entirely by his mattress.

“I said its fine,” Tim says.  “You can call me any time you need to, okay?”

“Yeah dude,” Kon sighs deeply.  “Whatever you say.”

Tim pulls himself up against his headboard and stuffs a pillow behind his shoulders.  “How bad was it this time?” Tim asks and receives only a groan from Kon in response, so he says, “It’s been a while since your last one hasn’t it?”

“Almost two weeks,” Kon says.  “I seriously thought I was done with this crap.”

Tim stares at the grey and white pattern on his bedsheets.  “This… probably isn’t what you want to hear, but it’s not going to just stop, Kon.” Tim says.

“Yeah,” Kon says.  “I’ve already been told.”

He’s silent after that and Tim doesn’t really know what to say, and feels like he’s proven to be pretty shitty at comforting Kon so far, despite Kon consistently calling him almost every time he’s had an attack over the last month.  It’s not always _during,_ though.  In fact, this is probably the first time it has been.  Usually it’s after the fact, and usually Kon tries to play it off like he’s just calling to chat but Tim can always recognize the tremor in his voice lingering right when he first says hello.

Tim wants to say something encouraging like _I’m so proud of you_ or _you’re doing so well_ but everything that he thinks about saying, even the most heartfelt and quite frankly embarrassing things, end up sounding patronizing when he imagines speaking them out loud.  So Tim echoes Kon’s silence and pretends he can’t hear Kon sniffing periodically on the other line.

Eventually, once Kon’s breathing has leveled completely, Tim says, “Do you um, want me to stop by today?”

Kon sighs and says, “You don’t have to.”

“Its fine,” Tim says, “I don’t work today. I was planning to head to the tower tonight so my patrol’s already covered.  I’ll just tell the team that something came up.”

Kon is quiet for a brief moment before he says, “Yeah?”

“Sure.” Tim says.  “Plus I have it on good authority that I could use a day off.”

Kon laughs.  “You could use like a _month_ off.”

“I don’t think I could survive a month off.”

“Yeah well,” Kon says.  “Time off’s not all it’s cracked up to be anyway.  Trust me.”

“I do,” Tim says, and cringes when it comes out weirdly heartfelt instead of joking and snarky.  “Uh, I’ll aim for noon alright?”

“Noon Gotham time or noon Smallville time?”

“Smallville time.” Tim says, glancing at his clock.  With any luck he’ll be able to get at least a few more hours of sleep in before he has to get up again.

“Alright dude, I’ll see you then.” Kon says.  “And, uh, thanks.”

Tim sinks back into his pillows.  “You’re welcome.”

Kon hangs up and Tim closes his eyes and tries to go back to sleep without thinking about Kon having panic attacks alone on the farm.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

When Tim comes up from the hangar, Martha is waiting for him with a shotgun in her hands.  She’s smiling sweetly and when Tim glances at the empty driveway she says, “Conner went into town to fetch a few things for me.  He’s been restless lately so I’ve been letting him run some of my errands.”

“He took the truck?” Tim says with a raised eyebrow.

“Well he couldn’t very well _fly_ into town, now, could he?” She asks giving him a look as though he should know better.

“No,” Tim says, “I’m more surprised you let him _drive_.”

Martha clicks her tongue. “Conner is a great driver.”

“Hmm,” Tim says.

“But enough of that.  Timothy I was wondering if you’d do me a little favor while Conner’s out.”

“Of course,” Tim admirably manages to keep from cringing outwardly and glances around the immediate area briefly to assess the number of potential chores he could be dragged into completing.  “I’d be happy to help.”

“You see,” Martha says, and adjusts her grip on the shotgun which, Tim isn’t really sure he’s liking the look of. “Ever since you took out those cameras I just… well it’s not that I don’t trust Conner and Krypto to protect the farm but… I’d just feel safer if I knew I had some means to protect _myself_ , so,” Martha glances down at the gun and Tim swallows.  “I know you don’t really use guns but, well, I thought maybe you could teach me a few tips, you know, about safety and things like that.”

“Um,” Tim says and thinks that maybe he should be concerned about the fact that Martha Kent, despite knowing that Batman and his protégés don’t use guns, still assumes Tim knows how to shoot one.  Tim _does_ know how to shoot one.  It’s just the automatic assumption that sort of miffs him. “Sure.”

“Oh, thank you, dear,” Martha says, smiling widely.  “I’ve got a few bottles set up already on the fence behind the barn,” she says and beckons Tim to follow him.  For some reason he feels like he’s just been played.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Tim’s not sure where Martha got her shotgun, but he is sure she’s absolutely never used a gun before in her life. He’s willing to bet it used to be John’s before he passed and has since simply been sitting somewhere collecting dust until Martha got the bee in her bonnet to learn how to fire it.  When Kon walks around the back of the barn looking bewildered, Tim is showing Martha how shoulder the gun without the kickback breaking her collarbone after she shoots.  So far she’s been a pretty quick study at learning the parts and how to load it and cock it, but Tim is sort of reluctant to actually let her shoot it.

“Um,” Kon says, staring at them from the corner of the barn.  “Okay, what universe did I accidentally slip into on my way back from town?”

“Oh Conner!” Martha exclaims waving Kon over, “Come here, watch Tim shoot!” she then smacks Tim gently in the arm and says, “Go on, hit one of those bottles like you did before, show Conner!”  She turns back to Kon, “This is so much fun!”

“I would like it to go on record that I am concerned about everything that’s happening right now,” Kon says, walking towards them.

Tim sighs and aims for one of the bottles.  He hits it easily because it’s barely three yards away from him, but Martha explodes with disbelief and praise regardless. 

“I thought Bats didn’t let you guys _touch_ guns,” Kon says.

Tim lowers the shotgun and says, “Know thyself, know thy enemy.  Bruce taught all of us how to use every kind of gun out there, we’re just not allowed to actually use them.”

“Damn,” Kon says.  “I take it Bruce doesn’t know about whatever is happening here, then?”

“No,” Tim says and gives Kon a look, “and if he ever finds out that I taught Superman’s mom how to use a shot gun, I’ll be disowned.”

Kon snorts.  “Please, you’re like his favorite child.  He’d never disown you.”

Tim hands the gun to Martha.  “Dick is his favorite,” he says, helping her hold the gun firmly against her collar.  “I was probably second favorite before Damian showed up.”  Sometimes Tim feels like he’s just a successful project to Bruce.  Proof that Dick wasn’t a fluke, that he _can_ raise a Robin to adulthood without getting them killed.  Justification that Batman _does_ need a Robin and he’s not needlessly endangering children.  It doesn’t bother Tim too much.  After all, that’s the reason he wanted the job in the first place, so it’s only natural that Bruce would view him that way.

“Timothy,” Martha says and narrows her eyes at him.  “Bruce loves all of you boys equally.”

“Yeah dude,” Kon says, “I was just joking.  That’s messed up.”

Tim doesn’t have the heart to tell them that he’s thought about it _a lot_ and knows he’s right, so he just shrugs and helps Martha aim the gun.  “Make sure it’s tight against your shoulder,” he reminds her and she nods so he says, “Then pull the trigger whenever you’re ready.”

Martha shoots the gun, but her aim is slightly off.  She misses the bottle and hits the fence post instead. “Oh!” she says, “Shoot!”

“You hit _something_ ,” Tim says.  “That’s better that most people on their first try.”

She gives him a mothering look and says, “Oh you’re too sweet.”

“Can I try?” Kon asks.

Martha and Tim say, “No,” at exactly the same time, but only Martha follows it up with, “You’d only cheat.”

Kon gapes at them and puts both hands over his chest.  “You guys are _so_ mean to me.”

Martha laughs and Tim gives him a blank look over her shoulder.

“Ugh,” Kon slouches heavily, “Fine.  You guys stay out here practicing.  I’ll just go inside and be alone,” he turns slowly around, hands in his pockets, and begins walking back to the farm house.

“Oh _please_ ,” Martha says.  She sets the rifle down and turns to Tim.  “We’d better go inside before he throws a tantrum.”

Kon is sitting at the kitchen table, slumped dramatically over it, head resting in his outstretched arms.  Martha makes a noise at him and swats his shoulder.  “Get up and entertain your friend you great big drama queen.”

The sound that comes out of Kon’s mouth is one of true betrayal and he shoots a look at Tim before pushing himself up from the table and saying, “fine.  Tim, let’s go play Mario Kart.  I don’t need this kind of harassment in my life.”

Martha makes a great show of rolling her eyes and mutters, “good lord,” under her breath.  “Dinner is going to be at seven sharp, boys.”

For his part, Kon does not break his façade of affronted indignation, but Tim cracks a smile on their way up the stairs.

After rolling out his desk chair Kon pulls a miniature papasan from God knows where – probably under his bed but that’s an area of Kon’s room that Tim tries to avoid looking at for his own wellbeing and sanity – and sets it in front of the TV next to his chair.

“Take your pick,” he says.

Tim chooses the desk chair because he doesn’t feel like having the circulation on his legs cut off while Kon messes with the cords of his Wii.

“Can I ask you something?” Tim takes the wiimote Kon hands to him

“Shoot,” Kon says, and pops a squat in the papasan.

“So, you’re not going to weekends at the tower because of your panic attacks,” It’s not really a question because Kon more or less already confirmed this, but Tim wants to make sure he’s got his facts right before he actually asks what he wants to.

“Yeah,” Kon says after a moment.  “Pretty much.”

“So…” Tim says and purses his lips in thought.  “But you wanted to patrol with me?”

Kon’s head makes an abortive bob, like he wanted to tuck his face into his neck but thought better of it.  He fiddles with his Wiimote for a moment and then says, “Yeah, well… I figure if I go crazy and fall out of the air because I’m hyperventilating _you’d_ at least be able to calm me down after I hit the ground before I started charring pedestrians with heat vision.”

Tim swallows the lump in his throat which contains the unspoken implication that Kon thinks the other titans _wouldn’t_ be capable of calming him down, and he says in as even a tone as he can muster, “fair enough.”

“Besides,” Kon says, “It’s not like I _enjoy_ being grounded like this.  I wanna get back in the game _so bad_ , dude.  I just – I wanted to feel like I was normal again, you know?  Well, normal for us, I mean.”

Kon seems like he’s kind of forgotten about Mario Kart, staring blankly past the character choose screen on his old tube TV.  Tim decides to pick Luigi and it startles Kon out of his reverie.  “If you want,” he says, “I could try to make it to more of the weekends while Bruce is gone so you can go too.  I mean, if that’s what would make you feel – I don’t know – safe to be there.”

Slowly Kon turns to look at him.  “You’d… you’d do that?”

Tim glances at Kon’s bewildered expression and says, “Yeah?  Kon all you had to do was ask.  Of course I’d do that.”

For several moments Kon fiddles with his controller until his selector hand lands on Daisy.  “Thanks Tim,” he says and hits A.

“You’re picking Daisy?” Tim says.

Kon frowns at him.  “Don’t hate.  Daisy’s hot.”

“Huh,” Tim says, and chooses rainbow road at the same time Kon tells him he’s a dirty rotten bastard.

Tim laughs.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

They have Stacy for dinner and Kon bows his head in a quite frankly blasphemous mockery of prayer for the recently ended life of his favorite pig.  To her credit, Stacy tastes delicious, and Tim says as much during dinner for which he gets a grateful smile from Martha and a betrayed scowl from Kon who says again, for probably the fifth time, that he _really_ liked Stacy, as a pig and a person.

By the time Martha is dishing them each up a scoop of her world famous homemade vanilla ice cream with a slice of pie that Tim futilely tries to tell her he doesn’t have room for, Tim realizes once again how much he misses this.  Not even _this_ , because a Kent family dinner is always nice, but specifically, Tim misses _Kon_.  It’s a different sort of missing from when Kon was dead, though, because it hadn’t been on his mind really until he got here.  It’s not a bone deep ache, pulling on him every hour of every day until it starts to feel normal, it’s more like he just somehow forgets how good it feels to have Kon around until he’s actually around and then everything else by comparison feels dull.

Eventually Martha goes upstairs to bed and Tim helps Kon finish washing the last of the dishes from dinner.  It’s at this point that Kon informs Tim they aren’t going to be sleeping in his room.

“We’re sleeping in the loft.” Kon says.

“No,” Tim says, and thinks of the wind chill at night in Gotham, even though they’re in Kansas right now and Tim knows it’s not _that_ cold outside.

“Come on dude!  It’s awesome up there.  The bed is _huge._ Plus there’s a heater and we’ll bring a bunch of blankets and you can totally see the whole night sky through the hatch.  It’s gonna be _super_ romantic.”

Tim stares at him and knows he’s joking.

 

 

 

 

 

Even with the heater, it’s cold as sin in the loft and Tim sits huddled underneath two blankets and a comforter, wondering how Kon convinced him to spend the night out _here_ of all places, and _why_.  He says as much when Kon’s head appears outside the loft window and the answer he gets is Kon gliding smoothly through the opening, grinning and holding up a bottle of brandy.

“Where did you get that?” Tim asks.

Kon shrugs.  “This thing’s been sitting in Ma’s liquor cabinet for years.  Pretty sure she doesn’t even drink anymore.  Figure somebody ought‘a put it to use, right?”  The bed creaks when Kon sits down next to Tim and pops the cork with his TTK.

Tim eyes the bottle.  It’s not like he’s never drank before. Hell, Tim’s probably been drunk more times than is average for a purported do-gooder of his age, but he’s suspicious of Kon’s motives, especially given his current mental state and also, “Can you even _get_ drunk?”

“Dunno,” Kon shrugs.  “I mean, I’m pretty sure though.  My metabolism’s fast but it’s not like _The Flash_ fast.  It’s not even really Superman fast, so all signs point to yes.”

Tim takes the brandy from Kon. “So can Clark get drunk?” He tips the bottle up to his lips, feels the liquid burn the back of his throat and then settle, hot in the pit of his stomach.  It tastes like absolute shit.  He hands it back to Kon.

“You don’t _know_?”

Tim gives him a look.

“Obviously you’ve never experienced a Kent family Thanksgiving.”  Kon takes a swig and then looks like he’s about to choke.  He swallows, makes a strained noise, and says, “Holy shit, dude.  How’d you drink this with a straight face?”

Smiling, Tim grabs the bottle and takes another drink.  He hands it back to Kon who is looking at him like _Tim’s_ the alien/human hybrid clone.

“Jesus,” Kon says.  “Anyway, I think with Clark getting drunk is like a willful thing y’know?  He could throw back a dozen beers and still be as fresh as a daisy, or he could be totally wasted.  It all depends I guess.”  Kon takes a drink and then says, “Also quit hogging all he blankets?”

“What do you need them for?” Tim asks.

“A guy doesn’t have to be a weak mortal to want a blanket, alright?  I don’t have to explain myself to you.”

Tim squints at Kon and then scoots across the bed, resting his back against the old headboard and re-positioning the blankets.  “I’ll share but I’m not giving even one of these up.”

“God you’re stingy,” Kon says, but hands the brandy back to Tim while he shimmies under the blankets.  Tim takes the opportunity to slip another drink and question his current mental faculties.  Drinking alcohol underneath a pile of blankets on top of a bed _next_ to Kon is pretty near numbers three or four on Tim’s list of things to never ever do under any circumstances.

“Alright,” Kon says and makes grabby hands for the brandy.  Tim obliges and Kon swallows some with a cringe.  “Here’s how this is gonna work,”

“Here’s how what’s gonna work?” Tim asks and pulls the brandy back.  If he’s going to fuck up he might as well go all the way.  He downs another big gulp and shoves the bottle at Kon who is eyeing him.

“I spilled my guts to you about me and Knockout, so how it’s gonna work is:  now I’m going to get you totally smashed and you’re gonna spill your guts to me about some deep dark secret _you’ve_ been keeping.  And don’t try to tell I know ‘em all because I know I don’t.”  Kon takes a drink.  Tim thinks it looks like a distinctly aggressive drink.

“Hmm…” Tim accepts the bottle from Kon and holds it in his lap for a moment.  “Should I start small or do you want something that’s going to mess you up?”

Kon rears his head a little and says, “Jeez dude, don’t mess me up.  I’m messed up enough.  Start small.”

“Okay,” Tim takes a swig.  “I got stabbed while you were dead.”

“Oh big whoop,” Kon rolls his eyes.

“I _mean_ ,” Tim says, “I got like, totally run through.”  He puts the brandy between his knees and fumbles with the blankets to reach for the hem of his shirt which he pulls up, exposing the scar.  For good measure, Tim leans forward so Kon can see it on both sides.  “And then Ra’s al Ghul saved me and took my spleen.”

“Holy _shit_ , Tim,” Kon says and makes an abortive gesture like he was about to reach out and touch Tim’s scar but decided not to at the last minute.   Then he looks up and meets Tim’s eyes.  “You totally made that last part up.”

“Nope, I don’t have a spleen anymore.  I’ve got the medical records if you want them.” Tim says, and then, “Well – not the ones from Ra’s.  But after. The bacterial infection vaccines.  I’ve got a bunch of those.”

“ _Holy shit,_ Tim!” Kon says again, and reaches for the bottle between Tim’s knees.  He takes a long drink and then asks, “Is that like, important?  Do you need your spleen for stuff?”

“It’s an organ, Kon, so yeah, you need it for _stuff_ , but I’ll be fine.  I mostly just have to watch out for infections a little bit more diligently than most people.”

“Jesus, I said start _small_.”

“Sorry,” Tim says.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

They work their way through about half of the bottle, and its decent sized, Tim thinks, turning it slowly in his hands.  By this time, his fingertips are starting to get numb and he hasn’t moved from his cocoon next to Kon but he’s willing to bet that if he tried he’d have some trouble walking.

“My face feels hot,” Kon says and touches his face.

_Mine too_ , Tim almost says. _Is this the first time you’ve ever been drunk_? Tim thinks about asking.  “Your face _looks_ hot,” Is what Tim actually says.

Kon giggles.  It’s a noise Tim’s never heard him make before, or at least, not often.  It sounds un-staged in a way that Kon’s laughter doesn’t often sound.  The thought sinks straight to the pit of Tim’s stomach and Kon says, “Okay dude, you’ve covered losing your spleen, jerking off to pics of Nightwing, and wearing _Jason Todd’s_ green scaly panties the first time you were Robin.  What’s next?  This is the finale, you gotta give me somethin’ real good.”

By this point, Tim has descended completely into the bed.  He’s not sure how he feels about taking a drink while lying flat on his back, but he’s also not sure how he feels about saying what he’s thinking about saying without at least one more good swallow of this crap brandy, so he brings the bottle to his lips and takes a deep drink.  Then he opens his mouth and says, “I used to have a crush on you.”  And really that’s putting it mildly.  What Tim had was _so_ much more than a crush.  But Kon doesn’t need to know that, especially considering the fact that currently Kon is staring at Tim like Tim’s just confessed to being the long lost son of Darksied.

“No,” Kon says.

Tim looks up at the peaked ceiling of the loft and says, “Yeah.”

“No way,” Kon says.  “No _way_.  Dude you used to like, _hate_ me.  I call bullshit.”

Tim turns back to Kon and squints at him. “I never hated you.”

Kon returns the squint.

“I mean, I thought you were an over confident idiot sometimes, yeah, but I didn’t _hate_ you.”  He takes one last drink of the brandy and hands it to Kon who honestly seems pretty eager to take it off of Tim’s hands at this point.  “Mostly I was pissed at you because I thought you were hot but you were also insufferable half the time, so.”

“You thought I was hot?” Kon says.

Tim snorts.  “Please don’t act like you don’t _know_ you’re hot, Kon.  You know it.  I know you know it.”

“No, no,” Kon says.  “I know it.  I just didn’t know _you_ knew it.”

“I’m not blind,” Tim says.  “So yeah.  I knew.”

“Holy shit.” Kon says.  After he takes a swig of the brandy in his hands Kon immediately rolls over and props himself up on one elbow, facing Tim., “Do you wanna make out?”

Tim feels all of the blood drain out of his body and get soaked up by the mattress.  He doesn’t realize he’s already said, “No,” until he hears the word come out of his mouth.

“What?  Why not?”

“There are a thousand reasons, but primarily because when I said I used to have a crush on you, I meant it in the literal past tense, as in I do not currently have a crush on you and I haven’t had one for a very long time.  On you.”

“Ouch,” Kon says.  “Wait, why not?  What changed? It’s not like I got _less_ hot.  Also I’m totally not an overconfident douche bag anymore so by all rights you should like, be totally in love with me at this point.” Kon laughs and for some reason Tim feels anger bubbling inside all that hot brandy pooling in his stomach.  Of all the reactions Tim expected from Kon after a confession such as this (of which Tim has meticulously imagined many, many, possible reactions), flippancy was never one of them.

He takes the bottle from Kon and says, “What changed is you died,” with a lot more venom than probably was called for, but Tim is mostly drunk and he’s only going to get drunker after _this_ conversation - he’ll get drunk enough to completely forget it if he has to – so he takes a swallow of brandy and stares petulantly at the ceiling until such time as Kon decides to move past the current silence and speak.

It does take several minutes, or at least it feels like minutes.  Admittedly it’s hard for Tim to gauge time when he’s drunk, despite his best and most efficient outwardly sober appearances.  He doesn’t realize right away that Kon is actually touching him, has one hand  on his shoulder and is looming over him.

“Dude,” Kon says.  “Are you fucking serious?”

Tim’s eyes flicker to Kon’s face without his permission and he quickly re-averts them to the ceiling and takes another drink.

“Why didn’t you say anything?”

Tim takes a deep breath, considers not responding at all, never speaking again to be completely honest, but eventually he says, “You were flighty.  I liked you but I didn’t want flighty.  By the time you stopped being flighty you were with Cassie so.  I didn’t really see any reason to say anything.”

“What the fuck,” Kon says.  “So what, you just pined after me?  For years?”

“No,” Tim says.  “I just… I liked being your best friend.  That’s always been enough for me, Kon.  I didn’t _need_ to be more than that.  I wanted to be sometimes, sure, but it’s not like I was hopelessly vying for your attention all the time.”  Tim sighs.  “It doesn’t matter anymore anyway.  Like I said, past tense.”

“So,” Kon says, relaxing back into the bed slightly.  “I don’t get it.  Why can’t we make out then?”

Tim turns his head to glare at Kon’s stupid handsome face.  “Because you’re going through a lot of shit right now and I _know_ you’re not looking for a relationship, because we’re both drunk, and because I have _some_ amount of self-worth and I won’t make out with you just because you found out I like you and you think that makes me convenient and easy.”

As expected, Kon stares at him with a gaping mouth and Tim sighs and sits up.  He regrets the decision almost immediately when the room just about starts doing backflips all around him.

“I…” Kon says while Tim debates whether or not he should steal one of the blankets to wrap around himself when he leaves.  “Wait, I thought…” Tim decides it’s not worth it and he’d probably just trip over the damn thing anyway.  “I thought you said it was past tense.”

It’s not a sure thing, but Tim is fairly positive he feels his heart stop for a full three seconds before it picks up again at twice its normal pace.  Kon is holding his gaze when Tim dares to look back at him, and currently his flight instinct is kicking in pretty damn hard.  By the time he realizes he’s storming down the steps of the bat-jet hangar behind the Kent family barn, Tim barely even remembers leaving the bed or Kon in the loft.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

The _only_ reason Tim didn’t take off for Gotham the night before is because he was basically smashed and also he may or may not have left his comm. in a pair of pants in Kon’s room.  This means, unfortunately, now that he’s locked himself in the jet like petulant child locking himself in a bathroom, that he’s going to have to emerge and begrudgingly ask Kon for both his comm. and his clothes back.

Even imagining the scenario in his head is embarrassing enough to make Tim seriously consider just leaving his clothes and his comm. and flying back to Gotham without them.  But Tim likes to think of himself as a mature individual and so after fifteen minutes of internal pep-talking he manages to convince himself to open the jet’s bay door and head up towards the farm.

For some reason Tim half expected the kitchen and downstairs to be completely empty but Kon is sitting at the kitchen table looking sullen and Martha is in front of the stove cooking what Tim assumes to be pancakes.  Kon stands up so fast when Tim walks through the door he nearly flips the table over.

“I uh, need my stuff.” Tim says and starts for the stairs.

“Um,” Kon says, following Tim with his eyes as he moves past the kitchen.  “Can I talk to you?”

Tim shrugs mostly because he doesn’t trust himself to speak right now and throws a cautious glance at Martha who is really obviously ignoring them both.

Kon apparently takes Tim’s attempted nonchalance as consent and trails behind him up the stairs.  He finds his pants and his shirt in a pile near the foot of Kon’s bed and gathers them up as quickly as he can.  He also spies his cellphone next to Kon’s on his dresser and _god_ Tim hadn’t even remembered he’d left it there.  He shoves it into his back pocket and turns to leave the room but Kon is standing in front of the door which is closed behind him and staring at Tim with a heart broken expression that quite frankly Tim doesn’t want to be seeing.

“Look,” Kon says, dropping his gaze to the floor briefly and licking his lips.  “I um…”  He sighs.  “I thought a lot about what you said last night and I just want to make sure that you know I wouldn’t… I didn’t think…” He groans, tilts his head back until it hits the wood of his door and he’s staring up at the ceiling.  Tim watches the curve of Kon’s neck and clutches his clothes tighter to his chest.  Eventually Kon looks back at him and says, “I didn’t realize how serious this is for you, okay?  I never… _never_ would have said that crap about making out if I’d known it was such a big deal.  I mean, Jesus, Tim, you said it was just a _crush_ , I didn’t think… you know,” Kon trails off and then lets out a short huff.  “My point is, I was a huge dick to you, and I’m really, _really_ sorry.  You gotta know I would never try to intentionally trivialize your feelings like that, man.  And it won’t happen again, I promise.  Okay?”

Tim stares past Kon’s shoulder at the wood of his door for a moment and then says.  “Yeah, fine.” Silently Tim thinks to himself that if anybody in the world could ever hold a grudge against Conner Kent after an apology like that they’re either completely dead inside or they’re Jason Todd, which, same thing really.  Still, Tim can’t handle being here right now, doesn’t know if he can really handle being anywhere near Kon for the next several _weeks_ at least, but Kon’s still standing in front of the door, eyeing him in that horrible all-knowing way that he so often does.

“There’s one more thing,” Kon says and Tim prepares to build himself up for whatever is about to kick him metaphorically in the face.  “This is going to sound… really selfish so I’m sorry ahead of time for even asking but… You can’t just like disappear on me after this, okay?”

Tim feels his grip on his clothes loosen.

“I know that’s what you want to do because,” Kon makes some kind of gesture with his hands, “I _know_ you, but you just… can’t this time.  Because I’ll level with you, dude, I don’t think I could handle it.  I’m like… barely handling everything else so-,”

“Kon,” Tim says and only sort of realizes he’s said it.  He feels like he’s melting into the floor.  He also feels kind of like the world’s biggest jackass because not only is disappearing on Kon apparently something he has done often enough in the past for Kon to associate it as a habit of Tim’s, but also because Tim didn’t even stop to think about how his idiotic confession would factor into what Kon’s going through right now.

“Yeah?” Kon says.

Tim presses his lips together and stares at the floor just in front of Kon’s feet until he’s absolutely sure the wet feeling in his eyes isn’t going to leave them.  “I won’t,” Tim says, and then adds, “Disappear on you.”

“You promise?” Kon says.

“Yeah, Kon.  I promise.” Tim says, and raises his gaze to Kon’s face.  “I just… need like a few days though, okay?”

“Yeah, no, that’s fine.  That’s totally fine, Dude. Um,” Kon steps aside, finally unblocking the door.  “Sorry, you can go.”

After all of that Tim’s not actually sure he can get his legs to move him out of the room, but he does, muttering a pretty pathetic goodbye to Kon as he passes and heads out of the house and towards the jet as quickly as possible.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

“What the hell is wrong with you?”

Tim spins around in his chair to see Stephanie storming towards him from across his training mats.  He glances back at his monitors to make sure there’s nothing incriminating on them and there thankfully isn’t, just a list of known suspects involved in Penguin’s most recent weapons deals and a map containing known locations of his operation.

“Stephanie I don’t know what this is about, but I definitely know I’m not in the mood so can your righteous fury wait for a few days?”  Tim asks and turns his back to her.  It’s barely been twenty-four hours since he left the farm and Tim can only handle so much emotional confrontation in one day.

“ _Oh_!” Stephanie says, and Tim barely has to imagine her throwing her arms out to the side and waving them. “ _You’re_ not in the mood.  _God_ , Tim.  I’m _so_ sorry.  How _totally inconsiderate_ of me!  I’ll just conveniently forget about how you couldn’t stay out of _my_ life and _my_ business for more than ten seconds, and I’ll come back later.”

Tim puts his elbows on the desk and rests his head in his hands.  “Jesus.”

“Jesus can’t help you now, Timothy.” Stephanie says and grabs the back of Tim’s chair.  He barely catches the edge of the desk with his hand to stop her from spinning him around.  When he squints at her in annoyance she scoffs and moves to stand in front of him. “Fine.  Rob me of my theatrics. What did you say to Jason?”

“I didn’t say anything to Jason,” Tim says and turns back to his computer, pulling up a list of digitized evidence to scroll through.

“I know you graduated first in your class at the University of Bullshitting, but I’m not a _complete_ idiot, Tim.  And even if I were, I’d still be able to figure out you said something to him.”

“Could have been Bruce,” Tim says, and continues scrolling.

“Are you kidding me right now?  If it had been Bruce, Jason would be in Arkham and you know it.  Stop kidding yourself.  What did you say to him?”

Tim groans loudly and looks at Stephanie. “I barely had to say anything, Steph.  All I told him was that you liked him, and he should stay away from you.  He practically fell all over himself agreeing with me and reassuring me that you, and I quote, ‘wouldn’t take long to figure out he’s no good for you,’.”

“What?” Stephanie says.

“Look I get it, you don’t want me interfering with your personal life, but you don’t know Jason the way I do.  He’s clinically insane.  He might be experiencing a lucid period right now, but even he knows it’s only a matter of time before he snaps again. I did you a favor, trust me.”

For several long seconds Stephanie stares at him, one hand braced against his desk, the other against her hip.  Eventually she says, “You know what, Tim.  Maybe you’re right.  I haven’t known Jason as long as you.  But you had no fucking right to go behind my back and threaten him.  You should have come to _me_ and let _me_ make _my own_ choices instead of making them for me.”

Tim doesn’t say anything because he’s afraid of what might come out of his mouth, so he keeps scrolling through evidence files, even though he’s not really seeing any of it.  Logically, subconsciously, he knows that not dealing with a problem is never going to _solve_ a problem, but _consciously_ he doesn’t think he can be emotionally present enough to deal with this right now.  Maybe if he hadn’t royally fucked thing’s up with Kon, that wouldn’t be the case, but as it stands Tim is pretty sure he’s about one straw of hay away from breaking his proverbial camel’s back and completely losing it.  Unfortunately this isn’t the reaction that Stephanie is looking for.

She scoffs and straightens her posture.  “I actually thought that maybe I could be friends with you again, Tim.  I _really_ thought you’d grown out of all this psychotic control bullshit.  But I guess not.  So congratulations, because you’ve just ruined _two_ relationships.”  Stephanie doesn’t waste any time waiting for Tim to respond before she storms out of his basement.

After he hears the final buzzing whoosh of his garage door shutting behind her, Tim lets himself release a long, deep breath.  He does his best to pretend he doesn’t notice the way it shakes, or the tremble in his fingers as he scrolls onto the next file.

 

÷÷÷÷÷÷

It only takes two days for Dick to find him after Stephanie’s confrontation.  When he does, Tim may or may not be moping on a gargoyle, passively scanning the streets for crime, but mostly wallowing in self-pity.

Dick lands on the ledge next to him as silently and gracefully as Bruce ever could have.  If Tim is being honest, Dick probably did it _more_ gracefully and maybe a little less silently.

“What did I do this time?” Tim says and wants to kick himself for sounding like a whinny teenager, which, technically Tim still _is_ a teenager, but he likes to think he’s more mature than that.

“I was kind of hoping you could tell me that,” Dick says.  “What happened with Stephanie?”

Tim stares at the street for another moment, reclining against the wall of the building with his arms crossed.  When he looks at Dick he says, “Where’s the brat?”

“Oracle’s watching him.”

“And she agreed to that?” Tim says.

Dick smiles and it looks so perverted underneath the cowl that Tim nearly cringes.  “Is there room on that gargoyle for two?”

It _is_ a big gargoyle.  Tim looks at it for a moment and then sighs and scoots to the edge.  Dick joins him, sitting down and mirroring Tim’s position, their shoulders brushing.  “So,” he says. “You wanna tell me what happened?”

“You mean Stephanie didn’t tell you all about it in excruciating detail?”

Dick snorts and pulls down the cowl.  Tim takes this as a cue to follow suit and removes his own cowl.  “I believe her exact words were, ‘you need to have a chat with your control freak of a brother’ because you were, ‘ruining her and everybody else’s lives’.  I’ve got a feeling she was exaggerating a bit, but it doesn’t hurt to be cautious, so.  What’s up?”

Tim shifts. “She likes Jason.”

“Yeah, I know.  Is that it?”  He leans forward a bit and says in that sweet, concerned Dick Grayson tone of voice, “Are you jealous of him?”

Tim surprises himself by laughing.  It sounds more psychotic than he would have liked.  “ _No_ ,” he says.

Dick makes a noise like he doesn’t quite believe Tim and it kind of makes Tim mad that Dick is _so_ smart, reads people _so_ well but can’t figure out exactly what’s going on just by looking at Tim.  He knows it’s not Dick’s fault, knows that he plays things so close to the vest sometimes that even Dick can’t tell what’s going on his head, but he wants Dick to be better than that somehow. 

Except for all of Dick’s intuition, he’s not psychic and Tim sort of just wants to _shock_ him, so he blurts, “Conner and I told Jason that Stephanie had a crush on him so he’d stay away from her and then I sort of outed myself to Conner and told him I used to be borderline in love with him and now I’m pretty sure I lost two of my best friends because of it.”

Dick doesn’t say anything, just watches Tim who takes a deep breath.

“I mean,” Tim says, “Kon was nice about it.  Sort of.  But… he doesn’t need to have this on his plate right now on top of everything else and I _know_ he’s weirded out by it.  Stephanie I’m pretty sure is never going to speak to me again.”

Dick smiles sadly at him when he’s finally finished and the rising horror suddenly dawns on Tim that Dick _is_ better than that, probably knew all of this already, and only pretended he didn’t to make Tim mad enough to tell him about it himself.  For good measure, Tim scowls as ruefully as he can at Dick.

“Listen,” Dick says and puts an arm around Tim’s shoulders that Tim is very seriously considering shaking off.  He doesn’t, though.  “Stephanie isn’t going to never speak to you again.  You guys have fought before and it’s always turned out fine even when you didn’t apologize to her when you really probably should have.  Stephanie has a big heart and she loves you.  She’ll come around.  Just give her time and maybe butter her up a little bit.  Trust me, I know what I’m talking about here.”

“I guess you’d know a thing or two about pissing off ex-girlfriends, huh?”

“That was uncalled for,” Dick says mildly, “And for the record I’m on great terms with _all_ of my exes.  As for Jason,” He sighs, “I’m still on the fence about that one myself.  I believe he has the potential to change.  I believe he even maybe _wants_ to.  I don’t necessarily believe he’s going to.  He used to be a good person, Tim.  I know you never knew him before he died, but he really did, and I know that good person is still inside him somewhere.  I’m trying to stay optimistic and I’m trying to give him a chance to prove himself.  You should too.”

Tim huffs and stares angrily at the top of the gargoyles head.  “What about Kon?”

“Conner is going through a rough time as I’m sure you know.  I really don’t understand how he hasn’t figured out before now that you like him because, no offense Tim, but you’ve never been subtle on that front.”

Tim turns his angry stare from the gargoyle to Dick.

“But I also think that, right now, Kon is very confused about _a lot._ That being the case, I don’t think you can depend on him to be honest about his own feelings, to you or to himself.  Revealing your crush to him right now was probably poor judgment on your part-,”

“I was drunk,” Tim says.

“Well,” Dick bows his head, “Like I said, poor judgment.  But it’s not going to ruin your relationship.  Things will definitely be weird for a while, but you guys will get through it, I promise.”  Dick squeezes Tim’s shoulder.  “You’re patient, Tim.  You always have been. Exercise your patience.  Give Conner and Stephanie some time and a little space in Stephanie’s case, and be there for them when they need you.  Everything else will work itself out.  And,” Dick adds, “Maybe stop meddling in Stephanie’s love life.”

Tim doesn’t think he has the emotional fortitude to vocally express his gratitude towards Dick so he settles for bobbing his head up and down pathetically.

“So,” Dick says, “What did Conner say when you told him you liked him?”

Tim frowns at him, and frowns harder when he sees Dick wiggling his eyebrows up and down.  “I’m not talking to you about this.”

A dramatic noise of betrayal comes out of Dicks’ mouth. “But-!”

“I’m not going to re-live the most embarrassing moment of my life for you just because you want ‘The Deets’.” Tim says, making finger quotes.

“The most… Tim… the _most_ embarrassing?”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” Tim says, and then, “I will jump off this gargoyle right now if you don’t drop it!”

“Oh my god,” Dick says.  “I can’t believe you won’t tell me.  _Me_!” He gestures emphatically to himself.

“Try not to take it personally.”

Dick pouts.  Through resolve, sheer force of will, and repeated exposure, Tim manages to ignore him.  Eventually Dick holds up his hands, one of which is still around Tim’s shoulder, and says, “Fine!  Fine.  You don’t have to tell me.  I don’t need to know.  It’s not like you’re my favorite brother or anything.”

“Damian’s your favorite,” Tim says and wishes there were two of him so one of him could push the other off this gargoyle right now by force.

The expression Dick gives him is reasonably horrified.  “Have you _met_ Damian?  Listen, Tim.  I love Damian.  But I also wish he didn’t have a mouth most of the time.  Or eyes, or a face at all.”

Tim can feel his own face morphing to reflect some obscure unnamable emotion.  He thinks it might be glee.

Dick points at him.  “Don’t tell him I said that, I’m serious.  He needs my undiluted emotional support right now this is a delicate and crucial time in his life.  That’s _why_ I made him Robin.  Also if he finds out that he’s capable of getting on my nerves he’ll never stop doing it and I’ll be in hell every day for the rest of my life.”

Tim snorts.  “You already live with him, how much worse can it get?”

Dick extricates his arm from behind Tim’s shoulder and looks at him seriously.  “It’s Damian,” he says, reaching to pull the cowl back over his head.  “It can always get worse.”

Tim sighs and sits up, pulling his own cowl back on.  He smiles at Dick.  “Thanks,” he says because he’s far enough away from the actual conversation to be emotionally sincere now without either 1. Sounding like a robot or 2. Breaking down in tears.

When Dick smiles back Tim calls it a win.  “I’m always going to be here for you, Tim.”  Dick says and then gives him a little wave before falling backwards off the gargoyle and into a tight spin.  Tim watches him and thinks that any idiot who’s ever seen Nightwing flying through the streets could tell that it’s him inside the batsuit, but Tim kind of almost prefers it this way.

Before he leaves to finish his own patrol he decides to text Stephanie.

_Jason needs a new TV.  I can give you the money for it.  Might be a good way to break the ice.  I’m sorry._

She doesn’t reply but Tim figures he deserves it.  He’ll mail her a cashier’s check tomorrow and she can burn it or eat it out of retribution or she can use it, and Tim will have to try not to dwell.

 


	4. December

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is insanely short compared to the rest of the chapters, which I've mentioned before, but I just want to reiterate that it's an outlier in length and also in POV. Basically, consider this an intermission even though it's not exactly in the middle of the fic....

December

 

As a general rule, Jason doesn’t like counting money.  First of all, it makes his hands smell fucking weird afterwards.  Second of all, Jason likes to think he’s above monetary lust.  But third, and most importantly, Jason doesn’t like counting money because he doesn’t fucking have a lot of it and it pisses him off.

This isn’t actually strictly true.  Jason does have a lot of money.  It’s just that, as soon as he gets it (from his various and numerous drug rings), it immediately leaves his hands and goes straight to maintaining his safe houses, weapons caches, general living amenities, and also occasionally, buying a new TV after some psycho and his super-clone boyfriend decided to throw a tantrum at him in his house.

At the end of the day, all he’s got left for the entire month of December is a measly three-hundred bucks, which means that if he wants to buy himself a new TV for Christmas this year, he might end up having to forgo all those prank gifts he had been planning to send to Dick and Bruce and he was really fucking looking forward to those.

He’s just finished counting out three-hundred-and-twenty-six bills for the third time, hoping vainly that maybe this time he’ll find an extra bill stuck to one of the twenties, when someone knocks on his garage door.  It’s really more of a pound actually.  Like if somebody took a sledge hammer and whacked it against the metal panels a couple of times.

Because Jason isn’t expecting visitors, and because ever since Drake and freak friend broke into his house he’s re-kindled his paranoia, Jason grabs his berretta off the coffee table and loads a clip, making his way slowly across the kitchen and down the metal stairs leading to the ground floor.

He checks the camera’s on his surveillance systems before doing anything and curses when he sees Stephanie outside.  She’s not even in the batgirl costume.  In fact, she’s wearing a purple tracksuit and looks quite frankly like she’s part of the Russian mob, but she’s also holding a _fucking TV_.  A big one.  A _flat screen_.  And so Jason slams the garage door opener as fast as he possibly can and thinks Drake can just go fuck himself because he doesn’t care how potentially dangerous it is to let someone he _knows_ has a crush on him into his house, he’s not turning down a free TV.

“Hey!” She says, and crouches under the door with the TV cradled precariously in her arms.  “Merry Christmas!”

“You did not buy me a TV.” Jason says, and shuts the door as soon as she’s through.  “Steph.  You didn’t.  Tell me you didn’t.”

She cackles loudly and says. “I didn’t.  Tim felt bad for breaking yours so he gave me a check.  But I was so mad I burned it.  So then I stole this one from his apartment.”

Jason isn’t one-hundred percent sure what it feels like to have his chest swell with pride, but he is sure whatever he’s feeling now comes pretty damn close.  He holsters his gun and moves to take the TV from Stephanie but she swings out of his reach, says “I _got_ it,” and proceeds to carry it all the way up the stairs, kick his old TV gracelessly off of its stand, and haphazardly balance the new one in its place.

“It was a rush job,” she says, “So I sort of forgot to get something to stand it up with because Tim had it wall mounted, but-,”

“I’ve got walls,” Jason says. “Hold on,” And he leaves to go dig through his utility closet for a drill and some screws.

It takes them maybe twenty minutes but Jason manages to find a soft spot in the wall and drill in a make-shift mount for the TV while Stephanie holds it in place.  When they’re done Stephanie immediately hooks up Jason’s cable box and DVD player, and futzes with the universal remote while Jason scours his pathetic movie collection for something to test it on.  He decides Back to The Future is good enough and comes back into the living room to Stephanie laughing victoriously as she flips through his limited channel selection.  He feels kind of sick when he realizes that he might have been smiling for the past solid half hour as she shoves the DVD into his player, but he decides to do what he does best and pretend that it’s fine and totally normal.

“So,” Stephanie says and pops a squat on his couch like this is completely regular, like Jason hasn’t spent the past month and a half trying to pretend she doesn’t exist.  “Got any plans for Christmas?”

Jason snorts and gets up off the couch.  “You mean besides getting drunk, and busting asses?”

Stephanie gives him a slanted look and Jason shrugs and says, “You want like a soda or somethin’?”

“Nah,” Stephanie says, staring intently at the television as she skips through all of the previews with extreme prejudice.  “So you’re just going to pull a Bruce and work all through Christmas, huh?”

Jason nearly spits.  Honestly he’s amazed that he doesn’t.  “Excuse me?”

Stephanie shrugs.  “I’m just saying.  That’s probably what Bruce is doing.”

On some level, Jason is aware of the tortured noise that comes out of his mouth, but on most levels he’s denying that it happened.  “ _No?”_ Jason says and he’s not entirely sure if it’s an answer to Stephanie’s initial question, or just simply a statement of general denial but he decides to play it safe and not commit to either one.

“So what are you doing for Christmas then?”

Jason laughs and does what he can emotionally to prepare for dealing with this entire conversation in one blow.  He begins with, “Listen Girlie,” and then pauses for at least five full seconds because Stephanie just leaned her shoulder very obviously up against his and Jason can’t actually remember what he was going to say.

“I’m listening?” Stephanie says.

Ah yes, that’s right.  “I know where you’re going with this, okay?”

“Oh you do?” she says, and makes a show of punching the play button on Jason’s brand new remote.

“Yeah smartass, I do.”

“Where’s it going?” Stephanie asks, and has the horrifying audacity to smirk at him.

Jason is just about ready to level with her so he pulls back slightly and turns towards her.  “You wanna know what I’m doing for Christmas?”

“Yeah!”

“Okay.  I’m going to sit here,” Jason points at his couch.  “Right here.”  He says.  “And I’m going to drink alcohol of multiple varieties.  And I’m to going to wallow in self-pity for a bit.  And eventually, at some point, I’m going to get pretty drunk.  And then I’m going to say to myself, ‘Jason.  Let’s fuck with Bruce.’ And then I’m going to do something stupid enough to make my life miserable for the next two years at least.”

Contrary to Jason’s expectations, Stephanie doesn’t look horrified or sympathetic, or even mildly upset.  Honestly she looks ecstatic and Jason’s not sure if he’s loving it or concerned about it.

“Jason,” Stephanie says and puts a very serious hand on Jason’s forearm which Jason is uncomfortably aware of.  “That’s fucking brilliant.”

“No?” Jason says.  “It’s probably not.”

“No, no, no,” Stephanie says.  “No it’s brilliant.  Let’s just skip the drunk and stupid part and go straight to the fuck with Bruce part.”

Jason squints at her and says nothing.

“We should send everybody prank gifts for Christmas.”

“We?” Jason says.  “Let’s?”

“Yeah!”  Stephanie apparently levitates into the air and turns sideways on the couch with her knees crossed.  Jason’s still trying to figure out how she did it when she says, “Brainstorm with me.  What have you got?”

“Um…” Jason says.  “I could… give Bruce a gift card to that Crow Bar on Grand Avenue?”

Stephanie deflates and stares at him for a moment before saying, “No Jason.  That’s psycho behavior.”

Jason is caught between being offended and agreeing with her so he settles for gesturing bewilderedly. “I could show up at the manor my old Robin costume?”

“Wow,” Stephanie says.  “We want to ruin Bruce’s life not give him a reason to put you in Arkham.”

“Fair,” Jason says.  “But honestly if we ruin Bruce’s life I don’t think I’d mind spending the rest of mine in Arkham.”

Stephanie makes some kind of noise and frowns at him.  “If you keep this up I’m going to start carrying around a spray bottle and spritz you every time you say something stupid.”  She makes a little squirting motion with her hands for good measure.

“Well _Steph_ ,” Jason says.  “What would you suggest then?”

Stephanie sits for a moment with her elbow on her knee and her hand under her chin, her face scrunched up in thought.  For his own sanity, Jason tries to look pretty much everywhere in the room except for at her.  He mostly fails.

“How about,” Stephanie says, “We spray paint a cute Santa face on the batmobile?”

“Yeah,” Jason says.  “Listen.  I’ve done all this crap okay.  It takes hours just to get close to that thing without setting off its motion sensors, forget about even _touching_ it.  Whatever we do, we’re not involving the car.  Or the plane.  Or the boat.  Or the… hovercraft.”

Stephanie groans.  “God fine, okay.  What if we go to the Christmas gala and just like, I don’t know.  Ruin everything?”

“I refuse to put my body or my mind within a ten mile radius of that Gala.  Forget it.” Jason says.

Stephanie frowns at him and says, “You know I’m not really feeling a lot of commitment from you right now.”

“You vetoed the Crow bar, _and_ the old Robin uniform.  The feeling is mutual.”

“Okay,” Stephanie says and crosses her arms.  “So we just have to find a happy medium between normal harmless pranks and, like, disturbed and psychotic pranks.”

“Right,” Jason says. “Clearly that’s the issue.”

“What if we mailed him like a hundred cute plushie crow bars with little happy smiles stitched onto them?”

“How is that _less_ psychotic than my idea?”  Jason asks.  “And forget it I don’t have that kind of money stuffed animals are expensive.”

“Oh I’m sorry Mr. Red Hood, I didn’t know you were the authority on cost per capita of stuffed animals.” Stephanie snorts and turns back around to face the T.V.  Her shoulder brushes Jason’s again when she leans against the couch and something horrible occurs to him.

“Listen Blondie,” Jason says and feels kind of like he might barf even as he stretches his arm behind Stephanie to rest against the back of the couch.  “You don’t even know half the shit that I’m an authority on.”

“Ah huh,” Stephanie seems not to notice but Jason is sure that she does.

“Um,” he says.  “I might have another idea, though.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.  Do you have um, a camera phone?”

Stephanie’s head whips around and her eyes home in on him, opened wide and looking more or less like Jason has propositioned her for sex, which, Jason does occasionally have problems with memory, but he’s nearly 100% positive that he’s at least not stupid enough to do something like _that_ , even when he’s disassociating.

“What year is it?”  Stephanie asks.  “Jason.” She says, and then again, “ _Jason_.  Do you know about technology?  Do you _not_ have a ‘camera phone’?” She asks, making finger quotes. “How old do you think you are? We’re in the same age bracket?”

“Jesus,” Jason says.  “I’m poor as shit okay.  No I don’t have a ‘camera phone’.” He tries to make the finger quotes back at her but ends up accidentally hauling her closer to his side since one of his arms is still around her neck.

She sort of giggles except its Stephanie so giggling isn’t really in her repertoire and the laugh turns into a cackle.  “Yeah well I do have a ‘camera phone’.” She says, why?”

“Can I see it?”

Stephanie looks up at him skeptically before leaning even _further_ into Jason’s side so that she can pull her phone out of her back pocket and give it to him.  She then says, “Don’t jail break it or anything this is, like, my normal person phone.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Jason says and pulls up her camera.  He turns and looks at Stephanie’s face with her raised eyebrow and her hair pulled back into probably the world’s sloppiest ponytail, and he clears his throat a little bit and says, “Um, so, you wanna kiss me?”

Stephanie doesn’t actually answer this question and instead her eyebrows raise basically to her hairline and she opts to bypass verbal communication entirely by leaning up and _actually_ kissing him, which Jason thinks is _great_ and also _unspeakably horrible_.  When she pulls back Jason says, “Yeah, so I meant, like, I’m gonna take a picture of it and we can send that to Bruce.”

“Oh,” Stephanie says, and then, “ _Oh_ ,” followed by, “ _Oh my God_ ,” and finally, “That’s fucking _perfect_.”

“I thought so,” Jason says.  “So anyway you’re going to have to do that again.”  He motions stupidly between himself and Stephanie.

“Hmm,” she says.  “Yeah I don’t know that’s kind of a huge imposition.”

Jason stares at her until she starts to laugh.  Kindly, Jason decides not to mention the fact that it sounds borderline hysterical.  She quiets down quickly though and says, “Okay, okay, we have to like pose though.”

“Okay?”

“Do you have a selfie stick?”

“What?” Jason says.

“God what am I saying you don’t even have a smart phone.  Never mind.”

“Smart phone?” The words are barely out of Jason’s mouth before Stephanie’s lips are _on_ it, and this is definitely different from the first kiss mostly because Stephanie is doing something similar to _licking_ his face – or at least that’s what it feels like – but Jason imagines that’s the part for show and snaps the picture, winking at the camera just because nobody’s ever going to say Jason Todd wouldn’t go the extra mile to emotionally dismantle Bruce Wayne on every level possible.

The aftermath is a blur.  They don’t kiss again, which Jason think’s is probably good because – all emotionally stunted joking aside – he _really_ doesn’t want to fuck this up, but Stephanie definitely passes out on top of him half way through the third Back To The Future movie and then snores through the rest of it.  Even though Jason more or less spends the entire night awake and trapped beneath her like a glorified human mattress, it feels like something close to nice and Jason hasn’t felt nice in a long time.

The next day they go to Kinko’s and make Christmas cards out of the picture.  They send it to the home address of every super they know complete with personalized greetings and Jason thinks hazily as he draws an over exaggerated picture of Nightwing’s butt next to his signature on Dick’s card that this might be the best Christmas he’s ever had.

 


	5. January

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I had a thousand things to say about this chapter but I've forgotten all of them.
> 
> All you need to know is: I know Tim's birthday isn't really in January, just roll with it, and also I'm not super experienced writing Cassie and I've only read a few handfuls of Teen Titans/Young Justice issues with her in them so my grasp on her characterization may be a little shaky.... sorry in advance if it is.

January

 

Things have been tense for Tim lately.  He calls Kon regularly because he promised – once a week like clockwork – and he talks about last week when Penguin tried to make a move on Black Mask, and Black Mask tried to make a move on Penguin, and Tim had to deal with both of them alone because Stephanie was still pissed at him, and it’s not like Tim can’t handle Penguin and Black Mask’s goons coming at him from both sides, its more that he can’t handle Black Mask to his left spitting out half assed jokes that he probably looked up on google specifically for this occasion, and Penguin to his right straight up _quacking_ while Tim keeps their respective hoards at bay like some kind of glorified babysitter. 

Kon laughs and says, “Man, that’s rough buddy,” and tells Tim that honestly though he should shut up and be thankful for what he’s got because Ma killed Kon’s second favorite chicken that morning and he now has to eat her for dinner, _and_ he couldn’t even be there for the execution because he had to touch cow udders for the umpteenth time in his short and horrible life. 

Tim snorts because that’s what he always does and everything feels awful and rehearsed and Kon doesn’t bring up Tim being in love with him even _once_.  In fact if Tim didn’t know better he’d think he dreamed the whole thing.  Except he didn’t, and Kon is just… ignoring it, which Tim always kind of thought would be his preference when faced with rejection, but honestly now that it’s happening he would prefer almost anything else.

Eventually one day Kon brings up the Titans.  Tim sort of tries to avoid saying anything about that because he _really_ wants Kon to start going back to the tower on weekends so that _he_ can go back and maybe when they’re there surrounded by their friends Tim will actually feel normal around Kon again.  But Tim doesn’t want to push, so when Kon calls him out of the blue one day and opens with, “I think I want to go to the tower this weekend.”

Tim says, “Are you sure?”

 They make plans to go that weekend and when Kon asks if he’ll be there, Tim says, “yes.” instead of what he should have said which is, “I don’t know, maybe,” because Bruce is still around, but Dick is down with some kind of stomach flu which means if Tim leaves, their patrol team will be moderately cut.

This being the case, Tim decides he needs to call Dick ASAP.  He sits back on his couch, staring blankly at the screen of his laptop which returns his gaze with cold, reflective disinterest, then he dials Wayne tower’s penthouse expecting Alfred’s sweet, aged voice to answer the phone with kind enthusiasm and hearing instead the deeply disarming tones of a devil on the precipice of puberty.

“What do you want, Drake?” Damian says.  “I’m busy right now.”

Tim barely bites back the snarky response on the tip of his tongue and says instead, “I’m just calling to see how Dick is.”

“Well then you shouldn’t have called because he is an inept, sniveling mess, and he needs my constant attention which, currently, you are depriving him of.”

Tim lets his head loll against the back of the couch and sighs.  “Could you put him on the phone for me?”

“No, he is asleep, and even if he weren’t, I’d never allow it.”

“Listen, I need-,”

“Master Damian, I ask that in the future you kindly refrain from answering the Wayne Penthouse’s home phone yourself as it is, in fact, my job.”

Tim exhales a breath of relief and is about to say something but Damian cuts in immediately.

“Pennyworth are you dull?  Grayson is _ill_.  Anyone could be attempting to extract delicate information from him in this vulnerable state, and with an oaf like you screening his calls their success would be assured.”

“They would need to have quite a lot of delicate information already in order to even have access to this number.  So please, hang up the phone and allow me to speak with Master Timothy.”

Damian mumbles something probably vulgar and then says, “Fine, but if anything happens to Grayson it’s on your hands.”

There’s an audible click and then a short breath from Alfred before he says, “ _Now,_ what can I help you with Master Tim?”

“How sick is Dick, really?” Tim asks.

“He is quite ill, but I believe he’ll make a full recovery.  His fever hasn’t been so bad.  It’s mostly the, ah, vomiting that’s really keeping him bed bound.”

“Right,” Tim says.  “So he’s cleared for visitation.”

“Absolutely, we’d love to have you, Master Tim.  I’ll prepare something nice for dinner tonight.”

“I-,”

“We’ll be expecting you around seven, then?”

“Um,”

“I’m afraid Master Dick won’t be able to join us but I’m sure the company will be good for Damian.”

“Y-yeah, sure.” Tim says, and then adds, “Maybe Damian should eat with Dick.”

Alfred laughs and tells Tim that it would be a miracle if they can get Damian out of Dick’s bedroom anyway.  When they hang up, Tim looks at his phone and finds that it’s nearly six o’clock which means he’d better get ready.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

In his life, Tim has been exposed to a great number of high tension encounters but he doesn’t think he’s ever been able to feel unspoken threats so _palpably_ before he met Damian Wayne.  Standing at the side of Dick’s bed like a trained hound, arms folded, eyes following Tim around the room like the finger on an Uncle Sam poster, Damian is a true pint-sized vision of terror.  Granted, history has taught Tim to anticipate being physically attacked when existing in the same room as Damian and this may be coloring his current emotions.

All of this is a stark juxtaposition to Dick who is smiling benignly at him from underneath a nest of blankets and saying, “Tim!” in a pathetically happy tone.  “I’m so glad you’re here, Tim.  Damian is a horrible nurse, he’s so mean.” Dick turns his head and shoots Damian a harsh look which Damian returns with his trademark “-tt-,” and a roll of his eyes.

“Listen,” Tim says.  “I didn’t just come to visit.”

At this, Dick scoffs and says, “Of course.”

“I was wondering if you could do me a favor, actually…”

“Grayson is in no condition to be doing the likes of you _favors_!” Damian says, and for a moment Tim half expects him to also jump on top of the bed and hiss.

“Can you leave?” Tim says.

“Ugh,” Dick raises his hands in the air and says, “If you guys start fighting I’m going to throw up on both of you right here.  Cut it out.”

Damian’s proverbial fur settles, but he’s still glaring when he says, “I’m not going anywhere, Drake.”

Thankfully Dick holds out his arm and waves Damian away saying, “It’s fine Damian.  Alfred probably needs your culinary advice and expertise in the kitchen.”

“I’m not an infant, Grayson.  Do not patronize me.”  Despite his words Damian moves around the bed and towards Dick’s door, but not before also saying, “Just don’t come running to me when Drake betrays and kills you in your weakened state.”

“Well,” Dick says, “If that happens I’ll be dead so you’ll have nothing to worry about.”

Damian slams the door on his way out and Dick groans again, throwing an arm over his eyes.  Tim takes a moment to sit on the edge of Dick’s bed.

“I don’t need anything serious,” Tim says, and Dick lowers his arm.  “I’m just… kind of wondering if you could call Steph for me since she’s not talking to me right now.”

Dick pushes himself up against his pillows and says, “Sure.  I assume I’ll be relaying some kind of message?”

“Yeah, I uh… I need somebody to cover my patrol this weekend.  I was kind of hoping she could get Jason to do it.”

“I have so many questions.” Dick says.

Tim sighs.  “Kon is going to be at the tower this weekend and he wants me there.  It’s his first time back, so…”

Dick’s mouth forms an ‘o’.

“Also, from what I can tell, Jason’s been making some kind of actual effort lately to be a decent human being, and I still need to figure out how to get Stephanie to talk to me again.  I’m hoping maybe giving my route to Jason for a few nights might be a good olive branch.”

“Probably not a bad idea,” Dick says.  “Did she at least send you their Christmas card?”

“Yeah,” Tim says, “It was signed and said ‘ _Suck it, Nerd_ ’ on the back.”

Dick has the audacity to laugh.  Then he sighs and says, “I had to make copies of mine because Damian keeps taking them off the fridge and setting them on fire.”

“Imagine that.”

“I think he has a crush on Stephanie,” Dick says reaching feebly for the glass of ginger ale on his bedside table.

Tim hands it to him. “I’m extremely skeptical of the idea that Damian is capable of romantic emotions.”

Dick rolls his eyes.  “Damian’s eleven,” he says.  “Anyway, I’ll give Stephanie a call.  Are you staying for dinner?”

Tim gives Dick his best impersonation of Bruce Wayne’s overscheduled CEO business man smile and says, “Alfred wants me to, but I’ve kinda got a lot on my plate right now so probably not.”

“Mmhmm, I’m sure that’s the reason,” Dick says. “Now get out of here before Alfred catches you or I puke.”

Holding his hands up, Tim takes a step backwards and says, “Don’t have to tell me twice.”

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Tim receives no actual correspondence himself from either Stephanie or Jason, but word gets to him via a text message from Dick with entirely too many emoji’s in it that Jason and Steph will each take half of his patrol over the weekend which lifts another weight off of Tim’s shoulders that he hadn’t realized he’d been carrying.  For a bizarre and surreal moment, Tim almost feels happy.

Then he looks at the clock and realizes there’s no way he’s getting to Titans Tower before nine tonight even if he left right now – and he hasn’t even started packing yet.

When he does finally get into the tower he shows up in civvies and finds Kon, Bart, and Jaime playing Mario Kart on the big screen.  That same happy feeling washes over him and it’s such a peaceful, foreign emotion that it comes with an accompanying sense of foreboding.

They don’t seem to notice him come in so he walks up to the back of the couch and leans over the edge.  Kon’s head turns immediately with an accusatory smile and says, “You’re _so_ late dude.”

“Sorry,” Tim says.  “Lost track of time.” Then he squints at the back of Kon’s head.  “Are you letting your hair grow out?”

“No,” Is Kon’s immediate first response.  He misses his turn on Rainbow Road and falls straight off the edge, cursing, then says, “I don’t know.  Maybe.  I just keep forgetting to ask Ma to cut it.”

There’s a curl starting to form right at the front and Tim doesn’t have the heart to tell Kon it makes him look just like Clark because something tells him that wouldn’t sit well with Kon so he settles for running his hand through Kon’s hair in what is supposed to resemble a friendly ruffle but which in hindsight feels like it was a much too intimate gesture.  In his usual fashion, Tim recovers by extracting his hand as quickly as possible and leaving the room immediately without speaking.

He barely hears Kon yelling, “Goodnight, weirdo!” at him as he rounds the corner of the main hallway.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Things seem normal.  Kon and Bart are fighting over the last frozen waffle when Tim enters the Titan’s kitchen that morning.  Cassie and Jaime are watching them with unprecedented scrutiny, and both groan in agony when Vic walks through the kitchen and takes the waffle while Bart and Kon are preoccupied attempting to commit double noogie homicide.  Tim grabs a yogurt from the fridge and smiles.

He runs diagnostics on the mainframe and Kon hovers nearby for most of the day, trying to goad Tim into playing Would You Rather.  It doesn’t really work.  Not because Tim won’t play, but because every time Kon thinks he’s got a really good one, Tim finds a loophole in his question.  It seems to be driving Kon insane, but he doesn’t leave and he doesn’t stop trying.  Eventually Bart joins in too, but none of Bart’s questions make any sense and in the end they stop answering the Would You Rather’s completely and just start trying to one up each other’s questions.

Its dusk when Vic comes in to tell them they’ve got a lead on some local arms dealers and the team is heading out to do reconnaissance and Tim doesn’t realize he’s in trouble until Kon turns to look at him expectantly and Tim glances briefly at the Titan’s mainframe, still running diagnostics.

“I’m,” He gestures to the screen. “Our security system is going to be vulnerable until I’m finished here.  I can’t-,” Tim bites off the end of his own sentence when Vic forcibly pulls him from his chair.

“Come on man, get out there.   Wouldn’t be right if you didn’t get some action while you’re here, since you’re _never_ here.  I’ll stick around and monitor your scripts.”  The smile that Vic sends Tim is suspiciously knowing, but Tim _knows_ Vic doesn’t… well, know, and Kon looks ecstatic, so Tim smiles back and says thanks.  Then he’s swept up into the familiar blur of prepping for a mission, gearing up, debriefing and before he even knows it he’s bobbing and weaving through traffic on the R-Cycle while Cassie, Kon, and Jaime soar above him, and Bart runs beside him, Gar picking up the rear in cheetah form.

It’s exhilarating and Tim _would_ be lying if he said he didn’t miss this, but the team soon splits up to cover ground and Tim worries that Kon might put up a fight about that but he doesn’t, so Tim, Gar, and Jaime break off to cover locations in Fisherman’s Warf and China town while Bart, Kon, and Cassie take the Mission district.

Nothing really pans out until they stumble upon a couple of idiots showing off their new highly illegal weaponry in a China Town back alley, but Tim doesn’t even get a chance to call in the location before he hears Cassie’s voice over the Comm.

“ _Red Robin, come in!”_

Tim, who is perched on the ledge of an apartment building next to a bored looking Jaime and Gar, says, “Report.”

 “ _We’ve got, uh…”_ on the other line, underneath the slightly panicked tone of Cassie’s voice, Tim can hear some sort of commotion.  The familiar din of Bart having a superspeed episode of word vomit is just audible.  “ _Kind of a problem out here.”_

“What’s going on?” Tim asks, leaning back from the concrete lip of the roof.  Jaime glances at him and says something to the scarab, pocketing the bag of chicken whizees he’d been eating.

“ _Well…”_ Cassie says _.  “I think something’s wrong with Superboy?”_

Tim shakes off the chill that sinks straight from his chest to his stomach and stands up.  “What happened?  Tell me exactly what’s going on.”

“ _I don’t know,_ ” Cassie says. _“One minute he was fine, we were tracking some goons down Folsom, the next minute he’s freaking out and laser beamed Beast Boy’s face right off a billboard!”_

Tim glances at Gar, who is currently in the form of a small green bird picking at pebbles on the roof.

“You mean Gar’s face _on_ the billboard?” Tim says.

“ _Yeah, yeah.”_

_“_ Yikes,” Jaime says, having evidently tuned into the conversation via whatever bizarre alien frequency the Blue Beetle suit uses to communicate.

_“Anyway, I’ve got him pinned down, but his… it’s like he can’t turn off his heat vision or something, he’s going burn a hole through the ozone layer.  And I don’t think he’s breathing right.”_

“He’s having a panic attack.  Is Bart there? Bart can you hear me?”

There’s a rustling sound, Tim’s pretty sure Cassie is smacking Bart, or otherwise manhandling him, and then she says, _“Answer your comm. Bart, Robin’s trying to talk to you.”_

_“SorrysorryTim?YougottahelpKon’sfreakinoutTimI’mfreakinoutsomethingswrongsomething’s-,”_

_“_ Whoa, esé, calm down!” Jaime says.  “You’re not going to help Superboy by giving _yourself_ a panic attack, bro.”

Tim motions for Gar and Jaime to follow him off the roof. “Kon’s going to be fine, but you and Cassie have to work together if you want to help him.  We’re moving to your location now, but until we get there, I need you to see if you can’t remember reading any psychology books during your excavation of the San Fran library.”

“ _Yeahyeahyeah,”_ Bart says while Tim grapples to the back alley below where the R-Cycle is parked.

“We’re going to go on ahead and meet you there, okay jefe?” Jaime says, and Tim just nods curtly and pulls his helmet over his head.

Soon, Bart’s voice echoes in his ear, “ _Okayokay, it’s possible to counteract rapid breathing by counting to ten with the patient, asking them to breathe with you, or name objects around them.  Anxiety can be reduced by requesting the patient to perform a physically tiring activity such as jumping jacks or jogging in place.”_

_“We can’t exactly ask him to do jumping jacks or look around the street, Bart, he’d decimate twenty buildings,” Cassie says._

Bart makes a painfully unhelpful sort of noise in response and Tim says, “Get him to close his eyes first.  He has to do that before you can deal with anything else.”

This of course prompts Bart to demand that Kon breathe with him followed by him counting to ten at super-speed.

Tim barely stops himself from groaning and thinks he hears Kon say something rude to Bart over the Comm. but doesn’t stop to ask.   “Bart that’s not going to help.  Cassie, I need you to count for him, okay?”

“ _Y-yeah, okay_ ,” Cassie says and Tim thinks it’s been awhile since he’s heard her sound this shaken up.  He takes a moment to force _himself_ to breathe and then listens to Cassie ask Kon to do the same.

Seconds tick by and Tim can feel every single one of them as he speeds past stoplights and dodges cable cars, Cassie’s voice a calming metronome in his ear.

By the time she gets to seven Bart says, “ _He closed his eyes,_ ” and Tim exhales so hard he fogs up his helmet a little. 

When she reaches ten Cassie says, “ _Alright Kon, I’m going let go of you now, okay_?” There’s a short silence and then, “ _I’ve got him up,_ ” Cassie says. “ _Blue Beetle and Beast Boy just got here. We’re um, we’re going to bring him back to the Tower.”_

Tim comes to a screeching halt at the corner of Market and Van Ness and says, “Yeah… Okay.  I’ll meet you guys there.”  He turns his bike and heads back toward the wharf.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Tim gets there first and meets them in the foyer.  Gar and Jaime are up front, looking a little bit shell shocked with Cassie and Bart following close behind and fluttering on either side of Kon who is glassy eyed and stiff which worries Tim more than anything else he’s seen so far.

On his way to Kon, Gar approaches Tim and gestures to Jaime, “We’re gonna hit the showers.  I know Kon’s kinda your boy, so I figure whatever happened out there you’ve got it handled.  But don’t forget we’re here if you need us, okay?  Vic too.”

Tim nods and thanks him and moves towards the couches where Bart and Cassie are sitting Kon down.  “Hey,” he says, taking the empty spot where Bart had been sitting before he scooted away at super speed.  “You know what happened out there?” Tim asks, trying to ignore Bart who is now pressed against his side like molded putty, clutching his bicep with both hands.

Kon doesn’t answer or give any indication at all that he even heard Tim.  “Kon?” Tim says and reaches up with his free arm to pull down his cowl.  It doesn’t get him any results and Cassie’s panicked glances are increasing in frequency and severity with every passing second, so Tim moves his hand tentatively towards Kon’s shoulder, just to try and ground him, but before it even gets there Kon’s got his wrist in a death grip.  Tim’s whole body coils up, ready for a fight, ready for Kon to lose it and go after one of them but he just holds onto Tim’s wrist.  His fingers loosen a little bit.  He lowers his hand back to the couch.  But he doesn’t let go of Tim.

As far as reactions go, Tim thinks he can probably work with this, and considering it seems like Kon has more or less totally checked out of the building, Tim figures he’s lucky Kon didn’t accidentally crush his wrist.

“Hey,” Tim tries again. “Kon, can you hear me?”

“Yeah, what?” Kon says, and Bart flinches next to Tim.  Kon doesn’t actually _look_ at him, but his voice sounds completely relaxed, like this is just any other friendly chat.  It’s disturbing to be honest.

“Do you know what happened out there?”

“What?” Kon says, and his brow furrows a little bit, but he’s still staring straight ahead, out the windows of the tower on the other side of the room overlooking Alcatraz.

“You had a panic attack,” Tim says.  “Do you think you can remember what might have caused it?”

Tim watches the space between Kon’s eyebrows slowly crinkle and his mouth twitch just slightly before he takes a slow, deep breath and says, “Um, can I-,” he exhales and licks his lips.  “I’d like to be alone… I think.”

When Bart and Cassie both exchange looks with Tim, but don’t actually move anywhere, Kon says, “I know I said I think, but I’m actually very sure.”

It takes a few seconds – for Bart Tim’s sure it takes hours – but they stand up.  “I can’t leave until you let go, Kon,” Tim says gently, to which Kon replies by not letting go.  In fact Tim thinks he might have actually tightened his grip. 

On her way out of the room Cassie throws him a suspicious look but Tim doesn’t have time to react to it before she looks away distracted in her attempt to herd Bart in a direction that doesn’t involve him just circling back to Kon somehow.

As soon as Cassie and Bart are out of sight, Kon wilts, tipping over and resting his head against the back of Tim’s hand, which he has forcibly held across his knees.  Tim’s not one hundred percent sure how holding onto his wrist is helping Kon, but he’s pretty sure this is an improvement from before, so he does his best to ignore Kon’s thumb gliding back and forth over his pulse point like a metronome keeping perfect time with his heartbeat. “Do you want me to call Clark?”

“Jesus,” Kon says.  “No.”

“Martha?”

“No.”

“Um.” Tim thinks for a moment. “Dick?”  He says, and then realizes that Dick is probably barfing his brains out right now.  “Never mind.  Not Dick.  That’s a bad idea.”

Kon doesn’t seem to notice or care about Tim’s babbling and says in a tone of voice which indicates he doesn’t realize Tim can hear him, “This is so fucking out of control.”

“Maybe you should call your therapist?” Tim says.

Kon doesn’t react to this either but he does pull his phone out of his back pocket and stare at it for a moment like he’s trying to remember how to use it.  Tim is initially horrified that Kon just carries his _personal_ cell phone around while he’s rescuing people as Superboy but decides to save that particular lecture for later.  Kon stands up and says, “I think I’m going to go home.” He squeezes Tim’s wrist before finally letting go of it.

Something is on the tip of Tim’s tongue.  He doesn’t know what it is, but he can feel it teetering there on the very edge.  Kon leaves the room before it has a chance to fall and Tim sits on the big couch in the middle of the Titan’s Tower and watches clouds roll over the ocean outside until Cassie and Bart come back in and then Tim gets too caught up in the whirl wind of questions to dwell on anything else.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

It feels wrong to leave the tower just to check on Kon, especially in the wake of everyone’s concern.  But Tim wants to.  He doesn’t know the last time he’s seen Bart this on edge, and Jaime and Cassie are both shaken.  Gar and Vic keep talking to each other in low murmuring voices, and Tim wants to leave _so_ bad but he doesn’t.

He stays the whole weekend.  On Saturday in the evening, Cassie finds him in the pool.  She sits on the edge of the diving board and waits for him to finish his laps.  Sometimes Tim catches her making faces at him when she thinks he’s not looking and despite everything, he smiles as he dives back into the water.

When he’s about to get out she comes to sit at the edge of the pool, rolling up her sleep pants – which have little Wonder Woman symbols patterned across them – and says, “You okay?”

Tim is confounded by the question mostly because he feels like he should be the one asking _her_ if _she_ ’s okay, but he says, “Yeah, of course,” and settles for, “How about you?”

She shrugs.  “I dunno.  I don’t think me and Conner are getting back together this time.”

“I wouldn’t be so sure,” Tim says, and crosses his arms over the edge of the pool next to her. 

She looks at him like she knows something he doesn’t. “I’m not saying it because I think _he_ won’t want to.  I’m saying it because I think _I_ don’t want to.”

Tim looks down at his arms, counts the faint freckles he sees up to five and says, “Don’t be ridiculous.  You love Conner.  You’ve always loved him.”

Now she looks at Tim like she’s about to eat him alive and says, “I’m not the only one.”  Tim feels himself melting into the pool water but Cassie keeps talking as though she hadn’t said anything at all. “That’s not the point though.  We’ve always been like this, on again, off again, over and over.  I love him, sure, but I’m just... tired of it.  And I’m worried.  Something’s really wrong with him, Tim, I’ve never seen him like this before.  You don’t know what it was like before we got him to calm down.”

“I do,” Tim says before he can think about it and Cassie’s head whips down to meet his gaze.  “I, um, stayed over at the farm a few months ago and he woke up in the middle of the night and blew a hole through his bedroom wall.”

Cassie’s hand comes up to cover her mouth as she mutters, “Oh my God.”  Then her eyes narrow and she says, “How much do you actually know?”

Tim looks back down at the freckles on his arms.  “A lot.  Most of it.  Maybe all of it, I’m not really sure.  But I’m not – I know he doesn’t want me to tell.”

Cassie looks hurt, her lips pressed together in a tight line, eyes small and shadowed by the dim lights of the pool.  “Doesn’t want you to tell me, you mean.”

“No,” Tim says.  “Anybody. It’s not - ,” Suddenly, Tim isn’t sure why Kon _doesn’t_ want Cassie to know.  He should.  They’ve been close for years, as many as Kon and Tim for sure. “It’s not because of you, Cassie,” he finishes, because regardless of Kon’s reasons, he knows this is true.

She huffs.  “Oh, I know.  I’m just jealous.”  She smiles at him but it’s a sad expression and Tim is not sure at all how to handle this situation so he clears his throat and looks back at his arms.  “You should tell him how you feel, Tim.” Cassie says and pulls her legs out of the pool to stand up. 

When she offers it, Tim takes her hand and wonders if he should tell her that he maybe already did tell Kon.

“I don’t think he knows it,” She says, “But he’s _obsessed_ with you.”

“We’re best friends,” Tim says by way of explanation.

She rolls her eyes.  “Yeah, but like… Tim…” Then she sighs and says, “Never mind.  It’s your business.  I just want to make sure that, whatever’s going on with Conner, you and _me_ are still friends.”

Tim smiles at her and feels like it’s the first time he’s really smiled in weeks.  “Always.”

Cassie grins. “I’d hug you but you’re soaking wet and these are my favorite pajamas, so we’ll have to settle.”

‘Settling’ is a kiss on Tim’s cheek and a gentle shove, followed by Cassie’s laughing voice saying, “Go hit the showers, Boy Wonder, you smell like a bottle of bleach.”

÷÷÷÷÷÷

 On Sunday they finish tracking down the arms dealers and make plans to bust the operation next weekend.  Tim has a feeling he won’t be there, but he helps them plot out their strategy anyway and then flies immediately to the Kent’s.

A nest of branches and debris are visible from the air as Tim lands.  Giant panels of splintered wood reach toward the blue Kansas sky like jagged rocks at the bottom of an ocean cliff.  The head of a large oak tree rests in the center of what used to be the Kent family barn, its roots, gnarled and torn, still cling to the ground from which it was ripped.  The sight of it sends something cold running down Tim’s throat and he tries to swallow the feeling away as he powers down the jet’s engines after he lands.

Martha Kent is sitting in a chair on the porch of the house doing a crossword puzzle, and when she sees him she stands up and smiles as though nothing is wrong.  “I wondered if you wouldn’t drop by for a visit.”

“Um,” Tim says, and jerks his thump in the direction of the wreckage behind him.  “The… barn?”

“Oh,” Martha waves her hand. “Kon had a… an accident when he came home.”

Tim’s chest tightens.  “Is he okay?”

“He’ll be fine,” Martha says, but Tim doesn’t miss the way she closes her eyes and inhales before she speaks.  “I think he may have done it on purpose.”

“ _What?_ ”

“Well, I’ve always hated that ugly tree and the barn’s been needing a good renovation for years now.  I’m just glad he took his anger out on something useful.  But I would be gladder if he’d had the forethought to _empty_ the barn before he decided to demolish it.”  She pats Tim on the shoulder and sits back down.  “He’s in his room I think – wouldn’t tell me what happened.  That boy is in a _mood_.” 

Tim wants to stay outside a moment longer.  He wants to ask Martha a question but he can’t put words to it, so he just smiles and heads inside, the screen door smacking its frame behind him.

The door to Kon’s room is open, which surprises Tim, but he takes it as an invitation to enter and makes sure to close it behind him.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Kon says from his bed.  He’s staring at his ceiling, arms resting against his stomach, knees bent.  If he hadn’t just spoken Tim would have wondered if Kon even knew he was there.

Tim opens his mouth but Kon cuts him off.

“What happened at the tower _or_ the barn,” he clarifies.  “None of it.”

Tim closes his mouth and finds that he needs to sit down, so he does, sinking to the floor of Kon’s bedroom with his back against the door.  “Do you want me to go?” he asks.

“I don’t care,” Is Kon’s response which somehow is worse than any other answer Tim could have imagined from him.

Tim settles for crossing his arms over his knees and resting his chin against them.  He lets his eyes wander the room.  It’s Kon’s signature mess, just tidy enough to be livable, but significantly cluttered – dirty clothes falling over the edge of his hamper, various combs, deodorant, and after shave clustered onto one half of his dresser, with CD’s, movies, and a pile of stuff that can be described only as _junk_ occupying the other half.  Across from the end of Kon’s bed is the hole he blew in the wall, noticeable now only because of the slightly off shade blue paint that covers the new plaster.  He tries not to look at Kon.

Tim doesn’t say anything and Kon doesn’t say anything, but Tim stays until the light in Kon’s bedroom turns orange and pink from the setting sun and then he stands up and says, “You’ll call if you need me?”

“Yeah,” Kon says, and Tim leaves.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Kon doesn’t call.

It has been three weeks.

Frankly speaking, Tim is losing his sense of practical reality.  He’s very familiar with the feeling because he’s pretty sure he lived with it for the entire year during which Kon was dead, and probably off and on the rest of his life, but right now it’s drowning him.  Namely because Tim doesn’t think he has any right to feel this way when _Kon_ is clearly the one fighting through a crisis right now. 

Even so, Tim’s spent pretty much every minute of the last week and a half with his laptop, laying in his bed, or across his couch, or on his kitchen floor, watching cooking shows on Netflix (because Stephanie stole his TV and he hasn’t been able to find the motivation to buy a new one) and ordering delivery on the rare occasions that he becomes hungry enough to drag himself to the phone or open a new tab in his web browser.  He gets up for patrol and for work, but he doesn’t think he’s sparred once since he left the Tower, and he certainly hasn’t spoken to anyone. 

It stands to reason then that when somebody knocks on the door of his apartment, Tim’s first thought is, _I didn’t order anything_ , followed quickly by, _I didn’t buzz anyone up_ , and finally ending in, _Oh no_.

“ _Open the door bird brain!”_

It’s Stephanie. 

Tim only realizes he has said this out loud when Stephanie says, “ _You bet your ass it’s Stephanie, now get off the couch and open the door!_ ”

“I’m not on the couch!” Tim yells back as he drags himself pathetically off the couch.

“You look disgusting,” Stephanie says after Tim opens the door.  “It’s worse than I thought.”

Tim frowns at her.  “I look fine.”  He probably doesn’t, though, and he’s _sure_ he smells because he just couldn’t muster the energy to shower after patrol this morning.  He keeps his distance from her as she walks through the door.

“Dick said you hadn’t been returning his calls but I didn’t think you’d let yourself go _this_ far.” Stephanie surveys his apartment which is, admittedly, a wreck. “Yikes, Tim.”

“I’ve been busy,” Tim says.  “Dick’s been calling?”

Stephanie barely stifles her laugh.  “ _Oh_ yeah.”

“Hey,” Tim says, “About… with Jason.  I really am sorr-,” Stephanie cuts him off by roughly pushing his head away from her and snorting.

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.  After knowing you for this many years, I’m familiar with your psychotic tendencies.  I wouldn’t still be friends with you if I couldn’t handle it.  Just don’t do it again.”

Because he’s not sure what to say in response, Tim just smiles at her.

“I’m not here to talk about that, though,” Stephanie says and walks past him to the coffee table in his living room which is barely visible beneath his piles of takeout boxes.  “You’re in a funk.”

His smile drops.  “I’m not in a funk.”

“You’re depressed,” She says, and pulls a giant garbage bag from, apparently nowhere.

“I’m not depressed.”

Stephanie stops shoving his trash into the bag to look at him skeptically.  “I heard about what happened at the tower,” She says and continues her work.

Tim sighs.

“Look,” she moves onto the kitchen.  “Whatever’s going on with Superboy, it’s obviously none of my business – even if I am _literally_ dying to know about it.  But it’s also _clearly_ messing you up.”  She huffs and sets the bag down on Tim’s bar counter.  “You don’t live in a vacuum, Tim.”

Tim looks at the floor and backs up a few feet to sit on the arm of his couch.

“Stop that,” Stephanie says.  “Get your butt up and go take a shower.  Jason’s on his way over with a cake.”

“Jason,” Tim says the name like a statement and has to think for a minute before he remembers that Jason is not someone he wants in his apartment.  “Don’t let him in here.”

The look Stephanie gives him over her shoulder is sharper than one of Damian’s katana, though the pink rubber gloves on her hands covered in soap suds do dull the severity of it.  “He’s trying to make amends.  He wants to be on good terms with you, Tim.  He’s bringing you a _cake_.”  This last part she says in the same tone of voice someone might use to describe a heroic martyr.

Tim does not understand and says, “He tried to kill me two times.”

“So did Damian,” Stephanie says and Tim thinks this makes even less sense than her previous argument.

“Yeah, and I wouldn’t want him in my apartment either.”

“Well that’s too bad because he’s coming too,” Stephanie drops a plate haphazardly into Tim’s drying rack.  “Probably.”

“ _Why_?” Tim asks, desperately trying to think of what he has done in recent history to deserve this kind of betrayal.  He briefly considers that Stephanie hasn’t actually forgiven him and that this is some horrific, cold blooded pay back, but it’s not Stephanie’s style.  If she were going to serve it to him, she’d want him to know it was happening.

“Just don’t worry about it and go take your shower.  If the cake gets here before you’re clean I’m worried the rancid smell of your disgusting body will sour it.”

“Thanks,” Tim says flatly and decides that if Jason and Damian really are about to show up on his doorstep for whatever nightmarish reason Stephanie has planned, he doesn’t want them to know how capable he is of living in filth.  Wordlessly, Tim climbs the stairs of his loft and tries to pretend he hasn’t been wallowing in self-pity for the last three weeks.

÷÷÷÷÷÷

When he comes downstairs, and to his great dismay, Jason is already inside his apartment.  He’s leaning his hip against the counter next to Stephanie and saying something that’s making her laugh.  It takes an enormous strength of will for Tim to ignore them, but he does and walks over to the island where a small cake box has been placed.

“Hey, you’re welcome for that by the way,” Jason says across the kitchen.  “Shit wasn’t cheap.”

“Generally when you do something nice for someone, you don’t demand that they thank you for it afterwards.”  Tim lifts the lid off the box and reads the pink cursive lettering on the cake in a daze.

_Happy Birthday_

_Replacement_

Above the words is a small toy crowbar which was clearly not part of the original decoration and had been shoved into the cake post purchase.  Tim’s first thought is, _it’s not my birthday._   His second thought is, _is it my birthday?_

Stephanie gasps and moves across the kitchen to rip the crowbar out of Tim’s cake. “Jason!” She looks at it for a moment before sticking the frosting end in her mouth and spinning around. “We discussed this!”  With a pop, she pulls the crowbar from her lips.

“Yeah,” Jason says.  “We discussed that it was a great idea.”

“You’re delusional,” She turns to Tim.  “Sorry, he’s not all the way house trained yet.”

“Excuse you,” Jason crosses his arms but makes no effort to follow through with a legitimate rebuttal, possibly because he never had one in mind, or possibly because Dick Grayson chooses that moment to burst through Tim’s apartment door (which Stephanie apparently left unlocked while Tim was in the shower) with a mountain of presents and Damian trailing behind him like a dog being dragged to the vet at the end of a very short leash.

“Sorry we’re late!” He says and incredibly manages to traverse the length of Tim’s apartment with every gift carefully balanced inside the tender care of his embrace until he drops them all unceremoniously on Tim’s couch.  “Had to check on a John Doe at the morgue, Gordon thinks Zsasz might be resurfacing.”

“Is he?” Tim asks and regrets it immediately when Dick whirls around and looks at him as though Tim is the eighth wonder of the world.

“Tim?” Dick says dramatically.  Behind him, Damian groans in such a way as to indicate that Dick’s annoyance with Tim has become a physically tangible aggravation in Damian’s recent life.  If nothing else, Tim takes comfort in this.

“Hey, Dick,” Tim says and tries so hard to make his voice sound normal.

“Hey,” Dick says back in a mockingly similar tone.  “Nice to see you. Nice to know you’re out here.  Alive.  Not dead.  Capable of dialing a phone.”

“Listen-,”

Dick cuts Tim off with a drastic hand gesture.  “No, no,” He says and makes his way toward the kitchen.  Damian follows him like a shade demon.  “Right now we are celebrating.”  This statement is followed by a stern finger point and Dick says, “ _Later_ I am going to scold you about ignoring your big brother’s phone calls and worrying him to death.”

Damian snorts and Tim says, “Okay.”

÷÷÷÷÷÷

Eventually, Tim manages to catch a glance at the calendar on his phone to confirm that today is, in fact, his birthday, and while forgetting his own birthday isn’t necessarily out of character for Tim, forgetting the date of the month _is_.  It dawns on Tim that Stephanie may have been right.  He resolves not to let her know this.

The party progresses as one would imagine.  Stephanie tries and fails to herd Jason and Dick away from potentially disastrous conversational topics at the same time that Damian tries and succeeds to drive them toward assuredly disastrous conversational topics.  At a certain point, Damian calls Stephanie a ‘fat whore’ and Jason rounds on him like a frothing animal.  Then he rounds on Dick for ‘failing his duty as Damian’s guardian by not beating the shit out of him for saying bullshit like this’.

Tim watches the entire exchange from a barstool at his island with a forkful of cake in his mouth.  Next to him, Stephanie is smiling dreamily at Jason who is giving Dick and Damian a full blown academic lecture on body shaming and women’s suffrage.  Tim hates that look on her face, but watching Jason in this particular light, he also sort of gets it, and as soon as he thinks this he has to stand up and leave the room for his own sanity.

After Tim takes refuge in his office – which is for all intents and purposes a show room for normal people who visit his apartment – Dick comes to find him.

“How was the seminar?” Tim asks before Dick can say anything that might lead them in the direction of a feelings heavy conversation.

Dick sits down in the less comfortable of Tim’s two office chairs (mostly because Tim himself is occupying the more comfortable). “Educational,” he says.  “And very aggressive.”  A moment passes and Tim curses himself for not filling it with words when Dick says, “I heard about what happened at the tower.  Is Kon okay?”

When Tim laughs he knows he sounds sort of crazy so he shuts his mouth and swallows and says, “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well.” Tim huffs and reclines in his chair. “I went to the farm that Sunday and… I don’t know, I don’t – he like… demolished the barn with an oak tree?”

“He _what_?”

“Yeah,” Tim says, glancing through the blinds of his office window at the perpetually dark and wet streets of Gotham, glowing in the light of orange streetlamps.

“On purpose?”

“Martha thinks so.  But, in a good way.  I guess she really wanted to remodel the barn – anyway, he didn’t want to talk to me at all when I went to see him.  I mean, I don’t know, he just seemed like… not Kon.”

Dick is silent and Tim feels like he’s waiting to hear more – an oft used tactic of Dick’s to force those around him into bearing their hearts so that they might escape his awkward silence.  Tim’s a sucker for it every time.

“It’s just that, before when he’s gone off the rails like this he’s still been… himself somehow?  But this time it was like he just disappeared and left his body behind and I guess it – it didn’t really hit me until then that this is – that he’s really messed up.”

“Hmm.” Dick leans forward in his chair and it squeaks on its base. “Have you talked to him since then?”

“No,” Tim says.  “He said he’d call if he needed me but he hasn’t.”

“Well, no news is good news.  You can’t be his crutch, Tim.  If something serious happened Clark would let you know.”

“Yeah, but-,”

“If Conner needs you, he _will_ call.  But maybe what he needs right now isn’t you, maybe it’s to be alone for a little while.”

“I know _that_ ,” Tim says and hates how petulant he sounds.  “I just -,”

“Wish you could do more to help,” Dick finishes for him and walks the desk chair closer to Tim like a child so that he can put his hand on Tim’s shoulder.  “I know.  So does Conner.  You’re a good friend, Tim.  Conner will be okay, and so will you.  Just give it time.”

Tim exhales and somewhat guiltily leans into Dick’s touch.  For a minute, he lets himself feel like a kid again and then says, “Thanks Dick.”

The smile Tim gets in return is one of Dick’s most classic and sincere Nightwing™ smiles.  As usual, Tim feels winded after witnessing it. “Any time, favorite little brother of mine,” Dick says.  “When are you coming over for movie night by the way?  You missed the last one.”

“Is Damian still living with you?” Tim asks.

“Of course.”

“Never,” Tim says, and Dick makes a frustrated noise.

“Bring Conner.”

“Yeah, sure,” Tim rolls his eyes. “Because what Kon needs right now is prolonged exposure to the son of the Devil trapped inside the body of a child.”

“I know you’re talking about Damian, Tim, and that’s very insensitive.”  Dick seems to be giving Tim a look of scolding, but he also seems to be fighting off laughter. “I’m serious.  Two weeks from tomorrow.  The fifth.  Bring Conner.”

“Sure, Dick.” Tim says.

“I’m serious!” Dick says.

“Okay.”

Dick to stand up in a fit of exasperation and say, “You’re impossible!  It’s like fighting with Bruce!” he throws Tim one last smile before he leaves the room.

When Dick is gone, Tim pulls out his phone.  It’s stupid, but he texts Kon.

_Clone Boy_

_Today 8:47 AM_

_Dick invited you to movie night on the 5 th if you want to come._

_I think we’re watching Tremors._

Kon doesn’t reply and Tim manages to be okay with it.

**Author's Note:**

> ALTERNATIVE WORKING TITLES FOR THIS FIC COURTESY OF TUMBLR USER THE-BOWERBIRD:
> 
> Supermystery  
> Secret Mysteryboy  
> Tactile Teleconundrum


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